Kimi K2 vs Ministral 3 8B

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 32. 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 32.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LongBench v2, 47 to 38. Ministral 3 8B does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Quick Verdict

Pick Kimi K2 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority.

Agentic

Kimi K2

Kimi K2

29.3

Ministral 3 8B

28.9

27
Terminal-Bench 2.0
26
36
BrowseComp
36
27
OSWorld-Verified
27

Coding

Ministral 3 8B

Kimi K2

12.8

Ministral 3 8B

14.2

24
HumanEval
23
15
SWE-bench Verified
16
12
LiveCodeBench
15
13
SWE-bench Pro
13

Multimodal & Grounded

Kimi K2

Kimi K2

39.5

Ministral 3 8B

32.4

35
MMMU-Pro
27
45
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Kimi K2

Kimi K2

40.9

Ministral 3 8B

36.1

30
SimpleQA
28
28
MuSR
26
61
BBH
63
47
LongBench v2
38
50
MRCRv2
41

Knowledge

Kimi K2

Kimi K2

29.3

Ministral 3 8B

28

32
MMLU
28
31
GPQA
27
29
SuperGPQA
25
27
OpenBookQA
23
51
MMLU-Pro
52
3
HLE
3
34
FrontierScience
32

Instruction Following

Ministral 3 8B

Kimi K2

67

Ministral 3 8B

69

67
IFEval
69

Multilingual

Ministral 3 8B

Kimi K2

59.7

Ministral 3 8B

61.7

61
MGSM
63
59
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Ministral 3 8B

Kimi K2

42.7

Ministral 3 8B

43.3

32
AIME 2023
30
34
AIME 2024
32
33
AIME 2025
33
28
HMMT Feb 2023
26
30
HMMT Feb 2024
28
29
HMMT Feb 2025
27
31
BRUMO 2025
29
57
MATH-500
60

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Kimi K2 or Ministral 3 8B?

Kimi K2 is ahead overall, 34 to 32. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LongBench v2, where the scores are 47 and 38.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Kimi K2 or Ministral 3 8B?

Kimi K2 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 29.3 versus 28. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Kimi K2 or Ministral 3 8B?

Ministral 3 8B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 14.2 versus 12.8. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Kimi K2 or Ministral 3 8B?

Ministral 3 8B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 43.3 versus 42.7. Inside this category, MATH-500 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Kimi K2 or Ministral 3 8B?

Kimi K2 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 40.9 versus 36.1. 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 8B?

Kimi K2 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 29.3 versus 28.9. 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 8B?

Kimi K2 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 39.5 versus 32.4. 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 8B?

Ministral 3 8B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 69 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 8B?

Ministral 3 8B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 61.7 versus 59.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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