Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Ministral 3 8B

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 60 to 32. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 74.8 against 32.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 77 to 27.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 3.5 Sonnet if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B only becomes the better choice if its workflow or ecosystem matters more than the raw scoreboard.

Agentic

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

55

Ministral 3 8B

28.9

54
Terminal-Bench 2.0
26
62
BrowseComp
36
51
OSWorld-Verified
27

Coding

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

37.8

Ministral 3 8B

14.2

57
HumanEval
23
36
SWE-bench Verified
16
39
LiveCodeBench
15
37
SWE-bench Pro
13

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

74.8

Ministral 3 8B

32.4

77
MMMU-Pro
27
72
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

67.7

Ministral 3 8B

36.1

63
SimpleQA
28
61
MuSR
26
83
BBH
63
70
LongBench v2
38
70
MRCRv2
41

Knowledge

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

50.8

Ministral 3 8B

28

65
MMLU
28
65
GPQA
27
63
SuperGPQA
25
61
OpenBookQA
23
74
MMLU-Pro
52
5
HLE
3
59
FrontierScience
32

Instruction Following

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

83

Ministral 3 8B

69

83
IFEval
69

Multilingual

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

80.5

Ministral 3 8B

61.7

85
MGSM
63
78
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

71.2

Ministral 3 8B

43.3

65
AIME 2023
30
67
AIME 2024
32
66
AIME 2025
33
61
HMMT Feb 2023
26
63
HMMT Feb 2024
28
62
HMMT Feb 2025
27
64
BRUMO 2025
29
80
MATH-500
60

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is ahead overall, 60 to 32. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 77 and 27.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 50.8 versus 28. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 37.8 versus 14.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 71.2 versus 43.3. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 67.7 versus 36.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 55 versus 28.9. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 74.8 versus 32.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 83 versus 69. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.5 versus 61.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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