Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Ministral 3 3B

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 27. 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 multimodal & grounded, where it averages 91.9 against 30.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 93 to 15.

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 3B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Claude Sonnet 4.6 gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 3B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

71.1

Ministral 3 3B

22.9

70
Terminal-Bench 2.0
19
77
BrowseComp
33
68
OSWorld-Verified
20

Coding

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

60

Ministral 3 3B

6.2

93
HumanEval
15
69
SWE-bench Verified
8
54
LiveCodeBench
7
64
SWE-bench Pro
5

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

91.9

Ministral 3 3B

30.4

95
MMMU-Pro
25
88
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

87.6

Ministral 3 3B

30.1

95
SimpleQA
22
93
MuSR
20
88
BBH
57
83
LongBench v2
32
79
MRCRv2
35

Knowledge

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

71.8

Ministral 3 3B

24.5

99
MMLU
24
97
GPQA
23
95
SuperGPQA
21
93
OpenBookQA
19
83
MMLU-Pro
48
21
HLE
1
85
FrontierScience
28

Instruction Following

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

91

Ministral 3 3B

67

91
IFEval
67

Multilingual

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

89.7

Ministral 3 3B

59.7

91
MGSM
61
89
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

94.1

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
91
MATH-500
53

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is ahead overall, 78 to 27. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 93 and 15.

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.8 versus 24.5. 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 3B?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 60 versus 6.2. 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 3B?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 94.1 versus 36. 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 3B?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 87.6 versus 30.1. 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 3B?

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

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 91 versus 67. 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 3B?

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