Claude 4 Sonnet vs Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

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

Claude 4 Sonnet is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 64 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 4 Sonnet's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 79.7 against 30.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 81 to 25.

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 4 Sonnet 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 4 Sonnet gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 4 Sonnet if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Claude 4 Sonnet

Claude 4 Sonnet

57.9

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

34

56
Terminal-Bench 2.0
33
62
BrowseComp
37
57
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

Claude 4 Sonnet

Claude 4 Sonnet

42.9

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

7.2

65
HumanEval
16
51
SWE-bench Verified
9
36
LiveCodeBench
8
48
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude 4 Sonnet

Claude 4 Sonnet

79.7

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

30.4

81
MMMU-Pro
25
78
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

Claude 4 Sonnet

Claude 4 Sonnet

71.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

35.3

71
SimpleQA
26
69
MuSR
26
82
BBH
63
71
LongBench v2
37
72
MRCRv2
40

Knowledge

Claude 4 Sonnet

Claude 4 Sonnet

56.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

25.2

73
MMLU
25
73
GPQA
24
71
SuperGPQA
22
69
OpenBookQA
20
75
MMLU-Pro
49
12
HLE
1
67
FrontierScience
29

Instruction Following

Claude 4 Sonnet

Claude 4 Sonnet

83

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

68

83
IFEval
68

Multilingual

Claude 4 Sonnet

Claude 4 Sonnet

82.1

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

59.7

84
MGSM
61
81
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Claude 4 Sonnet

Claude 4 Sonnet

76.1

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

40.9

73
AIME 2023
27
75
AIME 2024
29
74
AIME 2025
28
69
HMMT Feb 2023
23
71
HMMT Feb 2024
25
70
HMMT Feb 2025
24
72
BRUMO 2025
26
81
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 4 Sonnet or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4 Sonnet is ahead overall, 64 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 81 and 25.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 4 Sonnet or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4 Sonnet has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.8 versus 25.2. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude 4 Sonnet or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4 Sonnet has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 42.9 versus 7.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude 4 Sonnet or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4 Sonnet has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 76.1 versus 40.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Claude 4 Sonnet or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4 Sonnet has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 71.8 versus 35.3. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude 4 Sonnet or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4 Sonnet has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.9 versus 34. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude 4 Sonnet or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4 Sonnet has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.7 versus 30.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude 4 Sonnet or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4 Sonnet has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 83 versus 68. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Claude 4 Sonnet or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 4 Sonnet has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.1 versus 59.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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