Claude Opus 4.6 vs Ministral 3 8B

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 32. 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 multimodal & grounded, where it averages 94.6 against 32.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 99 to 28.

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 8B. 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 8B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B 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 8B

28.9

80
Terminal-Bench 2.0
26
85
BrowseComp
36
74
OSWorld-Verified
27

Coding

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

75.1

Ministral 3 8B

14.2

91
HumanEval
23
80
SWE-bench Verified
16
75
LiveCodeBench
15
74
SWE-bench Pro
13

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

94.6

Ministral 3 8B

32.4

95
MMMU-Pro
27
94
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

93.1

Ministral 3 8B

36.1

95
SimpleQA
28
93
MuSR
26
94
BBH
63
92
LongBench v2
38
92
MRCRv2
41

Knowledge

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

78.9

Ministral 3 8B

28

99
MMLU
28
97
GPQA
27
95
SuperGPQA
25
93
OpenBookQA
23
92
MMLU-Pro
52
38
HLE
3
88
FrontierScience
32

Instruction Following

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

95

Ministral 3 8B

69

95
IFEval
69

Multilingual

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

94.7

Ministral 3 8B

61.7

96
MGSM
63
94
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Claude Opus 4.6

Claude Opus 4.6

97.2

Ministral 3 8B

43.3

99
AIME 2023
30
99
AIME 2024
32
98
AIME 2025
33
95
HMMT Feb 2023
26
97
HMMT Feb 2024
28
96
HMMT Feb 2025
27
96
BRUMO 2025
29
98
MATH-500
60

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead overall, 85 to 32. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 99 and 28.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Opus 4.6 or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.9 versus 28. 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 8B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 75.1 versus 14.2. 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 8B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 97.2 versus 43.3. 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 8B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 93.1 versus 36.1. 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 8B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.2 versus 28.9. 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 8B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.6 versus 32.4. 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 8B?

Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 95 versus 69. 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 8B?

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