Claude Opus 4.6 vs Ministral 3 3B

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 27. 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 6.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 91 to 15.

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 3B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Claude Opus 4.6 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 3B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

79.2

Ministral 3 3B

22.9

80
Terminal-Bench 2.0
19
85
BrowseComp
33
74
OSWorld-Verified
20

Coding

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

75.1

Ministral 3 3B

6.2

91
HumanEval
15
80
SWE-bench Verified
8
75
LiveCodeBench
7
74
SWE-bench Pro
5

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

94.6

Ministral 3 3B

30.4

95
MMMU-Pro
25
94
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

93.1

Ministral 3 3B

30.1

95
SimpleQA
22
93
MuSR
20
94
BBH
57
92
LongBench v2
32
92
MRCRv2
35

Knowledge

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

78.9

Ministral 3 3B

24.5

99
MMLU
24
97
GPQA
23
95
SuperGPQA
21
93
OpenBookQA
19
92
MMLU-Pro
48
38
HLE
1
88
FrontierScience
28

Instruction Following

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

95

Ministral 3 3B

67

95
IFEval
67

Multilingual

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

94.7

Ministral 3 3B

59.7

96
MGSM
61
94
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

97.2

Ministral 3 3B

36

99
AIME 2023
23
99
AIME 2024
25
98
AIME 2025
24
95
HMMT Feb 2023
19
97
HMMT Feb 2024
21
96
HMMT Feb 2025
20
96
BRUMO 2025
22
98
MATH-500
53

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead overall, 85 to 27. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 91 and 15.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.9 versus 24.5. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 75.1 versus 6.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 97.2 versus 36. 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 3B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 93.1 versus 30.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.2 versus 22.9. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 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 3B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.6 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 Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 95 versus 67. 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 3B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.7 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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