Claude Opus 4.6 vs Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

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

Claude Opus 4.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 85 to 60. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude Opus 4.6's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 75.1 against 35. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 75 to 33.

Claude Opus 4.6 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $15.00 input / $75.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning). That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude Opus 4.6 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 Opus 4.6 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

79.2

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

58.5

80
Terminal-Bench 2.0
60
85
BrowseComp
61
74
OSWorld-Verified
55

Coding

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

75.1

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

35

91
HumanEval
62
80
SWE-bench Verified
39
75
LiveCodeBench
33
74
SWE-bench Pro
36

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

94.6

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

71.5

95
MMMU-Pro
71
94
OfficeQA Pro
72

Reasoning

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

93.1

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

69.2

95
SimpleQA
70
93
MuSR
70
94
BBH
80
92
LongBench v2
66
92
MRCRv2
66

Knowledge

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

78.9

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

52.1

99
MMLU
71
97
GPQA
70
95
SuperGPQA
68
93
OpenBookQA
66
92
MMLU-Pro
69
38
HLE
7
88
FrontierScience
62

Instruction Following

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

95

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

81

95
IFEval
81

Multilingual

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

94.7

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

77.8

96
MGSM
81
94
MMLU-ProX
76

Mathematics

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

97.2

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

75.2

99
AIME 2023
73
99
AIME 2024
75
98
AIME 2025
74
95
HMMT Feb 2023
69
97
HMMT Feb 2024
71
96
HMMT Feb 2025
70
96
BRUMO 2025
72
98
MATH-500
79

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead overall, 85 to 60. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 75 and 33.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.9 versus 52.1. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 75.1 versus 35. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 97.2 versus 75.2. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 93.1 versus 69.2. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.2 versus 58.5. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.6 versus 71.5. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 95 versus 81. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.7 versus 77.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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