Ministral 3 8B vs LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

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

Ministral 3 8B has the cleaner overall profile here, landing at 32 versus 30. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.

Ministral 3 8B's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 14.2 against 7.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is IFEval, 69 to 80. LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Ministral 3 8B gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 32K for LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct.

Quick Verdict

Pick Ministral 3 8B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority.

Agentic

Ministral 3 8B

Ministral 3 8B

28.9

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

25.7

26
Terminal-Bench 2.0
22
36
BrowseComp
31
27
OSWorld-Verified
26

Coding

Ministral 3 8B

Ministral 3 8B

14.2

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

7.2

23
HumanEval
14
16
SWE-bench Verified
9
15
LiveCodeBench
8
13
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

Tie

Ministral 3 8B

32.4

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

32.4

27
MMMU-Pro
27
39
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Ministral 3 8B

Ministral 3 8B

36.1

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

32.1

28
SimpleQA
24
26
MuSR
22
63
BBH
59
38
LongBench v2
34
41
MRCRv2
37

Knowledge

Ministral 3 8B

Ministral 3 8B

28

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

26

28
MMLU
26
27
GPQA
25
25
SuperGPQA
23
23
OpenBookQA
21
52
MMLU-Pro
50
3
HLE
1
32
FrontierScience
30

Instruction Following

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

Ministral 3 8B

69

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

80

69
IFEval
80

Multilingual

Ministral 3 8B

Ministral 3 8B

61.7

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

60.7

63
MGSM
62
61
MMLU-ProX
60

Mathematics

Ministral 3 8B

Ministral 3 8B

43.3

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct

37

30
AIME 2023
24
32
AIME 2024
26
33
AIME 2025
25
26
HMMT Feb 2023
20
28
HMMT Feb 2024
22
27
HMMT Feb 2025
21
29
BRUMO 2025
23
60
MATH-500
54

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Ministral 3 8B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Ministral 3 8B is ahead overall, 32 to 30. The biggest single separator in this matchup is IFEval, where the scores are 69 and 80.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Ministral 3 8B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Ministral 3 8B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 28 versus 26. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Ministral 3 8B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Ministral 3 8B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 14.2 versus 7.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Ministral 3 8B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Ministral 3 8B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 43.3 versus 37. Inside this category, AIME 2025 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Ministral 3 8B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Ministral 3 8B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 36.1 versus 32.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Ministral 3 8B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Ministral 3 8B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 28.9 versus 25.7. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Ministral 3 8B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Ministral 3 8B and LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct are effectively tied for multimodal and grounded tasks here, both landing at 32.4 on average.

Which is better for instruction following, Ministral 3 8B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 80 versus 69. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Ministral 3 8B or LFM2.5-1.2B-Instruct?

Ministral 3 8B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 61.7 versus 60.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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