Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 44 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 59.3 against 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 62 to 28. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority.

Agentic

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

46.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

45
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
49
BrowseComp
41
47
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

21.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

30
HumanEval
24
20
SWE-bench Verified
17
15
LiveCodeBench
16
29
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

59.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

62
MMMU-Pro
28
56
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

49.4

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

36
SimpleQA
32
34
MuSR
33
67
BBH
70
60
LongBench v2
44
60
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

34.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

38
MMLU
30
37
GPQA
29
35
SuperGPQA
27
33
OpenBookQA
25
53
MMLU-Pro
54
8
HLE
5
41
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

66

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

66
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

58.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

60
MGSM
63
58
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

48.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

38
AIME 2023
33
40
AIME 2024
35
39
AIME 2025
34
34
HMMT Feb 2023
29
36
HMMT Feb 2024
31
35
HMMT Feb 2025
30
37
BRUMO 2025
32
62
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking is ahead overall, 44 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 62 and 28.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 34.3 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 21.8 versus 15.2. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 48.3 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 49.4 versus 42.1. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 46.7 versus 38.5. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 59.3 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 4.1 Opus Thinking or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 70 versus 66. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 61.7 versus 58.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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