Claude 3 Opus vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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 36. 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 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 73 to 28.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 3 Opus 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 Opus gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 3 Opus 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 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

48.1

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

44
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
56
BrowseComp
41
47
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

19

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

53
HumanEval
24
10
SWE-bench Verified
17
20
LiveCodeBench
16
20
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

70.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

73
MMMU-Pro
28
67
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

61.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

59
SimpleQA
32
57
MuSR
33
74
BBH
70
62
LongBench v2
44
63
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

45

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

61
MMLU
30
61
GPQA
29
59
SuperGPQA
27
57
OpenBookQA
25
62
MMLU-Pro
54
1
HLE
5
56
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

77

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

77
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

69.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

73
MGSM
63
68
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

65.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

61
AIME 2023
33
63
AIME 2024
35
62
AIME 2025
34
57
HMMT Feb 2023
29
59
HMMT Feb 2024
31
58
HMMT Feb 2025
30
60
BRUMO 2025
32
73
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Claude 3 Opus is ahead overall, 51 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 73 and 28.

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

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 45 versus 30. 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 (Reasoning)?

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 19 versus 15.2. 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 (Reasoning)?

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

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

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 48.1 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 Opus or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

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

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 77 versus 70. 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 (Reasoning)?

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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