Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Ministral 3 8B

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 32. 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 multimodal & grounded, where it averages 91.4 against 32.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 95 to 27.

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 8B. 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 8B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B 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 8B

28.9

69
Terminal-Bench 2.0
26
74
BrowseComp
36
69
OSWorld-Verified
27

Coding

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

57.5

Ministral 3 8B

14.2

87
HumanEval
23
66
SWE-bench Verified
16
53
LiveCodeBench
15
60
SWE-bench Pro
13

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

91.4

Ministral 3 8B

32.4

95
MMMU-Pro
27
87
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

86

Ministral 3 8B

36.1

91
SimpleQA
28
89
MuSR
26
88
BBH
63
82
LongBench v2
38
81
MRCRv2
41

Knowledge

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

70.7

Ministral 3 8B

28

95
MMLU
28
93
GPQA
27
91
SuperGPQA
25
89
OpenBookQA
23
84
MMLU-Pro
52
21
HLE
3
84
FrontierScience
32

Instruction Following

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

90

Ministral 3 8B

69

90
IFEval
69

Multilingual

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

88.4

Ministral 3 8B

61.7

91
MGSM
63
87
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5

92.4

Ministral 3 8B

43.3

97
AIME 2023
30
99
AIME 2024
32
98
AIME 2025
33
93
HMMT Feb 2023
26
95
HMMT Feb 2024
28
94
HMMT Feb 2025
27
96
BRUMO 2025
29
88
MATH-500
60

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is ahead overall, 76 to 32. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 95 and 27.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.7 versus 28. 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 8B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 57.5 versus 14.2. 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 8B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 92.4 versus 43.3. 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 8B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 86 versus 36.1. 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 8B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.3 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 Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 91.4 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 Sonnet 4.5 or Ministral 3 8B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 90 versus 69. 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 8B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 88.4 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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