DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) vs Ministral 3 3B

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

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 41 to 27. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)'s sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 44.2 against 22.9. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LongBench v2, 57 to 32.

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Ministral 3 3B 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.

Quick Verdict

Pick DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

44.2

Ministral 3 3B

22.9

42
Terminal-Bench 2.0
19
48
BrowseComp
33
44
OSWorld-Verified
20

Coding

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

19.9

Ministral 3 3B

6.2

26
HumanEval
15
14
SWE-bench Verified
8
16
LiveCodeBench
7
25
SWE-bench Pro
5

Multimodal & Grounded

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

41.5

Ministral 3 3B

30.4

37
MMMU-Pro
25
47
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

45.8

Ministral 3 3B

30.1

32
SimpleQA
22
30
MuSR
20
64
BBH
57
57
LongBench v2
32
56
MRCRv2
35

Knowledge

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

32.8

Ministral 3 3B

24.5

34
MMLU
24
33
GPQA
23
31
SuperGPQA
21
29
OpenBookQA
19
53
MMLU-Pro
48
10
HLE
1
37
FrontierScience
28

Instruction Following

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

70

Ministral 3 3B

67

70
IFEval
67

Multilingual

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

62.1

Ministral 3 3B

59.7

64
MGSM
61
61
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)

46.1

Ministral 3 3B

36

34
AIME 2023
23
36
AIME 2024
25
35
AIME 2025
24
30
HMMT Feb 2023
19
32
HMMT Feb 2024
21
31
HMMT Feb 2025
20
33
BRUMO 2025
22
62
MATH-500
53

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or Ministral 3 3B?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) is ahead overall, 41 to 27. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LongBench v2, where the scores are 57 and 32.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or Ministral 3 3B?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 32.8 versus 24.5. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or Ministral 3 3B?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 19.9 versus 6.2. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or Ministral 3 3B?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 46.1 versus 36. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or Ministral 3 3B?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 45.8 versus 30.1. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or Ministral 3 3B?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 44.2 versus 22.9. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or Ministral 3 3B?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 41.5 versus 30.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or Ministral 3 3B?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 70 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or Ministral 3 3B?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.1 versus 59.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

Weekly LLM Benchmark Digest

Get notified when new models drop, benchmark scores change, or the leaderboard shifts. One email per week.

Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We only store derived location metadata for consent routing.