Grok 4.1 vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Grok 4.1 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 84 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Grok 4.1's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 93.2 against 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 99 to 30.

Grok 4.1 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 (Reasoning). That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Grok 4.1 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. Grok 4.1 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Grok 4.1 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Grok 4.1

Grok 4.1

76.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

79
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
79
BrowseComp
41
73
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Grok 4.1

Grok 4.1

73.4

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

91
HumanEval
24
77
SWE-bench Verified
17
73
LiveCodeBench
16
73
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Grok 4.1

Grok 4.1

93.2

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

95
MMMU-Pro
28
91
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Grok 4.1

Grok 4.1

91.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

95
SimpleQA
32
93
MuSR
33
93
BBH
70
90
LongBench v2
44
89
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Grok 4.1

Grok 4.1

79.5

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

99
MMLU
30
97
GPQA
29
95
SuperGPQA
27
93
OpenBookQA
25
90
MMLU-Pro
54
40
HLE
5
91
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Grok 4.1

Grok 4.1

93

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

93
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Grok 4.1

Grok 4.1

92.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

96
MGSM
63
91
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Grok 4.1

Grok 4.1

96.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

99
AIME 2023
33
99
AIME 2024
35
98
AIME 2025
34
95
HMMT Feb 2023
29
97
HMMT Feb 2024
31
96
HMMT Feb 2025
30
96
BRUMO 2025
32
97
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Grok 4.1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Grok 4.1 is ahead overall, 84 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 99 and 30.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Grok 4.1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Grok 4.1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.5 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Grok 4.1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Grok 4.1 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 73.4 versus 15.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Grok 4.1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Grok 4.1 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 96.8 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Grok 4.1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Grok 4.1 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 91.9 versus 42.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Grok 4.1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Grok 4.1 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 76.9 versus 38.5. 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, Grok 4.1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Grok 4.1 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 93.2 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Grok 4.1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Grok 4.1 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Grok 4.1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Grok 4.1 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 92.8 versus 61.7. 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.