Claude 3 Haiku vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Claude 3 Haiku is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 49 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 3 Haiku's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 68.7 against 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 70 to 28.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 3 Haiku is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Claude 3 Haiku gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 3 Haiku if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Claude 3 Haiku

Claude 3 Haiku

44

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

40
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
53
BrowseComp
41
42
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Claude 3 Haiku

Claude 3 Haiku

19.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

48
HumanEval
24
17
SWE-bench Verified
17
20
LiveCodeBench
16
19
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude 3 Haiku

Claude 3 Haiku

68.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

70
MMMU-Pro
28
67
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Claude 3 Haiku

Claude 3 Haiku

59.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

54
SimpleQA
32
52
MuSR
33
74
BBH
70
63
LongBench v2
44
63
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Claude 3 Haiku

Claude 3 Haiku

42.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

56
MMLU
30
56
GPQA
29
54
SuperGPQA
27
52
OpenBookQA
25
63
MMLU-Pro
54
2
HLE
5
50
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Claude 3 Haiku

Claude 3 Haiku

76

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

76
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Claude 3 Haiku

Claude 3 Haiku

71.1

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

73
MGSM
63
70
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Claude 3 Haiku

Claude 3 Haiku

62.2

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

56
AIME 2023
33
58
AIME 2024
35
57
AIME 2025
34
52
HMMT Feb 2023
29
54
HMMT Feb 2024
31
53
HMMT Feb 2025
30
55
BRUMO 2025
32
71
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 3 Haiku or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3 Haiku is ahead overall, 49 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 70 and 28.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 3 Haiku or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3 Haiku has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 42.8 versus 30. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude 3 Haiku or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3 Haiku has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 19.3 versus 15.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude 3 Haiku or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3 Haiku has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 62.2 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Claude 3 Haiku or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3 Haiku has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 59.6 versus 42.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude 3 Haiku or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3 Haiku has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 44 versus 38.5. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude 3 Haiku or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3 Haiku has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 68.7 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude 3 Haiku or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3 Haiku has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 76 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Claude 3 Haiku or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3 Haiku has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.1 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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