Kimi K2 vs Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

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

Kimi K2 has the cleaner overall profile here, landing at 34 versus 31. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.

Kimi K2's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 39.5 against 30.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 35 to 25. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) does hit back in agentic, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Kimi K2 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 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if agentic is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

Kimi K2

29.3

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

34

27
Terminal-Bench 2.0
33
36
BrowseComp
37
27
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

Kimi K2

Kimi K2

12.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

7.2

24
HumanEval
16
15
SWE-bench Verified
9
12
LiveCodeBench
8
13
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

Kimi K2

Kimi K2

39.5

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

30.4

35
MMMU-Pro
25
45
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

Kimi K2

Kimi K2

40.9

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

35.3

30
SimpleQA
26
28
MuSR
26
61
BBH
63
47
LongBench v2
37
50
MRCRv2
40

Knowledge

Kimi K2

Kimi K2

29.3

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

25.2

32
MMLU
25
31
GPQA
24
29
SuperGPQA
22
27
OpenBookQA
20
51
MMLU-Pro
49
3
HLE
1
34
FrontierScience
29

Instruction Following

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

Kimi K2

67

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

68

67
IFEval
68

Multilingual

Tie

Kimi K2

59.7

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

59.7

61
MGSM
61
59
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Kimi K2

Kimi K2

42.7

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

40.9

32
AIME 2023
27
34
AIME 2024
29
33
AIME 2025
28
28
HMMT Feb 2023
23
30
HMMT Feb 2024
25
29
HMMT Feb 2025
24
31
BRUMO 2025
26
57
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Kimi K2 is ahead overall, 34 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 35 and 25.

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

Kimi K2 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 29.3 versus 25.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Kimi K2 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 12.8 versus 7.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Kimi K2 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 42.7 versus 40.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Kimi K2 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 40.9 versus 35.3. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 34 versus 29.3. 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, Kimi K2 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Kimi K2 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 39.5 versus 30.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 68 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Kimi K2 and Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) are effectively tied for multilingual tasks here, both landing at 59.7 on average.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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