Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 78 to 60. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude Sonnet 4.6's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 60 against 35. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 93 to 62.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 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 (Reasoning). That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 4.6 gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

71.1

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

58.5

70
Terminal-Bench 2.0
60
77
BrowseComp
61
68
OSWorld-Verified
55

Coding

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

60

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

35

93
HumanEval
62
69
SWE-bench Verified
39
54
LiveCodeBench
33
64
SWE-bench Pro
36

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

91.9

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

71.5

95
MMMU-Pro
71
88
OfficeQA Pro
72

Reasoning

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

87.6

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

69.2

95
SimpleQA
70
93
MuSR
70
88
BBH
80
83
LongBench v2
66
79
MRCRv2
66

Knowledge

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

71.8

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

52.1

99
MMLU
71
97
GPQA
70
95
SuperGPQA
68
93
OpenBookQA
66
83
MMLU-Pro
69
21
HLE
7
85
FrontierScience
62

Instruction Following

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

91

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

81

91
IFEval
81

Multilingual

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

89.7

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

77.8

91
MGSM
81
89
MMLU-ProX
76

Mathematics

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

94.1

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
91
MATH-500
79

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is ahead overall, 78 to 60. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 93 and 62.

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.8 versus 52.1. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 60 versus 35. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 94.1 versus 75.2. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 87.6 versus 69.2. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.1 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 Sonnet 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 91.9 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 Sonnet 4.6 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 91 versus 81. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 89.7 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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