Claude 3 Opus vs Ministral 3 8B

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

Claude 3 Opus is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 51 to 32. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 3 Opus's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 70.3 against 32.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 73 to 27.

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

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 3 Opus 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 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

48.1

Ministral 3 8B

28.9

44
Terminal-Bench 2.0
26
56
BrowseComp
36
47
OSWorld-Verified
27

Coding

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

19

Ministral 3 8B

14.2

53
HumanEval
23
10
SWE-bench Verified
16
20
LiveCodeBench
15
20
SWE-bench Pro
13

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

70.3

Ministral 3 8B

32.4

73
MMMU-Pro
27
67
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

61.6

Ministral 3 8B

36.1

59
SimpleQA
28
57
MuSR
26
74
BBH
63
62
LongBench v2
38
63
MRCRv2
41

Knowledge

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

45

Ministral 3 8B

28

61
MMLU
28
61
GPQA
27
59
SuperGPQA
25
57
OpenBookQA
23
62
MMLU-Pro
52
1
HLE
3
56
FrontierScience
32

Instruction Following

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

77

Ministral 3 8B

69

77
IFEval
69

Multilingual

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

69.8

Ministral 3 8B

61.7

73
MGSM
63
68
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

65.9

Ministral 3 8B

43.3

61
AIME 2023
30
63
AIME 2024
32
62
AIME 2025
33
57
HMMT Feb 2023
26
59
HMMT Feb 2024
28
58
HMMT Feb 2025
27
60
BRUMO 2025
29
73
MATH-500
60

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 3 Opus or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3 Opus is ahead overall, 51 to 32. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 73 and 27.

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

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 45 versus 28. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 19 versus 14.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 65.9 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 Opus or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 61.6 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 Opus or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 48.1 versus 28.9. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.3 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 Opus or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 77 versus 69. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 69.8 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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