Kimi K2.5 vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Kimi K2.5 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 60 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Kimi K2.5's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 64.6 against 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 77 to 30.

Kimi K2.5 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.50 input / $2.80 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 Kimi K2.5 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 Kimi K2.5 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

Kimi K2.5

Kimi K2.5

52.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

51
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
59
BrowseComp
41
49
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Kimi K2.5

Kimi K2.5

38.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

69
HumanEval
24
42
SWE-bench Verified
17
37
LiveCodeBench
16
40
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Kimi K2.5

Kimi K2.5

64.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

61
MMMU-Pro
28
69
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Kimi K2.5

Kimi K2.5

71.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

74
SimpleQA
32
72
MuSR
33
81
BBH
70
67
LongBench v2
44
70
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Kimi K2.5

Kimi K2.5

57.2

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

77
MMLU
30
76
GPQA
29
74
SuperGPQA
27
72
OpenBookQA
25
74
MMLU-Pro
54
11
HLE
5
67
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Kimi K2.5

Kimi K2.5

85

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

85
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Kimi K2.5

Kimi K2.5

79.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

83
MGSM
63
78
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Kimi K2.5

Kimi K2.5

78.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

77
AIME 2023
33
79
AIME 2024
35
78
AIME 2025
34
73
HMMT Feb 2023
29
75
HMMT Feb 2024
31
74
HMMT Feb 2025
30
76
BRUMO 2025
32
82
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Kimi K2.5 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Kimi K2.5 is ahead overall, 60 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 77 and 30.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.2 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Kimi K2.5 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 38.9 versus 15.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Kimi K2.5 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 78.7 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Kimi K2.5 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 71.7 versus 42.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 52.3 versus 38.5. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 64.6 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Kimi K2.5 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 85 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.8 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.