Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Ministral 3 14B

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

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 76 to 55. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude Sonnet 4.5's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 57.5 against 33. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 87 to 58.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Ministral 3 14B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Claude Sonnet 4.5 gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 14B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 14B only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

70.3

Ministral 3 14B

48.4

69
Terminal-Bench 2.0
48
74
BrowseComp
55
69
OSWorld-Verified
44

Coding

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

57.5

Ministral 3 14B

33

87
HumanEval
58
66
SWE-bench Verified
37
53
LiveCodeBench
31
60
SWE-bench Pro
34

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

91.4

Ministral 3 14B

70.5

95
MMMU-Pro
70
87
OfficeQA Pro
71

Reasoning

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

86

Ministral 3 14B

63.6

91
SimpleQA
66
89
MuSR
64
88
BBH
74
82
LongBench v2
60
81
MRCRv2
60

Knowledge

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

70.7

Ministral 3 14B

50.1

95
MMLU
69
93
GPQA
68
91
SuperGPQA
66
89
OpenBookQA
64
84
MMLU-Pro
67
21
HLE
5
84
FrontierScience
60

Instruction Following

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

90

Ministral 3 14B

80

90
IFEval
80

Multilingual

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

88.4

Ministral 3 14B

76.8

91
MGSM
80
87
MMLU-ProX
75

Mathematics

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

92.4

Ministral 3 14B

69.7

97
AIME 2023
68
99
AIME 2024
70
98
AIME 2025
72
93
HMMT Feb 2023
64
95
HMMT Feb 2024
66
94
HMMT Feb 2025
65
96
BRUMO 2025
67
88
MATH-500
72

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 14B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is ahead overall, 76 to 55. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 87 and 58.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 14B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.7 versus 50.1. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 14B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 57.5 versus 33. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 14B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 92.4 versus 69.7. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 14B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 86 versus 63.6. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 14B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.3 versus 48.4. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 14B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 91.4 versus 70.5. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 14B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 90 versus 80. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 14B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 88.4 versus 76.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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