DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) vs Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

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

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 70 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)'s sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 80.6 against 35.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 79 to 16.

Quick Verdict

Pick DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if its workflow or ecosystem matters more than the raw scoreboard.

Agentic

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

69.4

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

34

71
Terminal-Bench 2.0
33
70
BrowseComp
37
67
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

51.2

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

7.2

79
HumanEval
16
48
SWE-bench Verified
9
45
LiveCodeBench
8
58
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

71

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

30.4

66
MMMU-Pro
25
77
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

80.6

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

35.3

83
SimpleQA
26
81
MuSR
26
86
BBH
63
78
LongBench v2
37
78
MRCRv2
40

Knowledge

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

64.4

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

25.2

87
MMLU
25
85
GPQA
24
83
SuperGPQA
22
81
OpenBookQA
20
73
MMLU-Pro
49
22
HLE
1
77
FrontierScience
29

Instruction Following

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

85

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

68

85
IFEval
68

Multilingual

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

80.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

59.7

84
MGSM
61
79
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking)

85.1

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

40.9

87
AIME 2023
27
89
AIME 2024
29
88
AIME 2025
28
83
HMMT Feb 2023
23
85
HMMT Feb 2024
25
84
HMMT Feb 2025
24
86
BRUMO 2025
26
84
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) is ahead overall, 70 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 79 and 16.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 64.4 versus 25.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 51.2 versus 7.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 85.1 versus 40.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 80.6 versus 35.3. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 69.4 versus 34. 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, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 71 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 V3.2 (Thinking) or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 85 versus 68. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

DeepSeek V3.2 (Thinking) has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.8 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.