Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) vs LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the cleaner overall profile here, landing at 36 versus 33. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)'s sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 15.2 against 8.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 24 to 17. LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking 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 (Reasoning) gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 32K for LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking.

Quick Verdict

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

Agentic

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

34.1

39
Terminal-Bench 2.0
34
41
BrowseComp
37
36
OSWorld-Verified
32

Coding

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

8.2

24
HumanEval
17
17
SWE-bench Verified
10
16
LiveCodeBench
9
14
SWE-bench Pro
7

Multimodal & Grounded

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

32.4

28
MMMU-Pro
27
40
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

38.4

32
SimpleQA
29
33
MuSR
31
70
BBH
67
44
LongBench v2
39
47
MRCRv2
42

Knowledge

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

27

30
MMLU
27
29
GPQA
26
27
SuperGPQA
24
25
OpenBookQA
22
54
MMLU-Pro
51
5
HLE
2
34
FrontierScience
31

Instruction Following

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

72

70
IFEval
72

Multilingual

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

60.7

63
MGSM
62
61
MMLU-ProX
60

Mathematics

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

42.3

33
AIME 2023
28
35
AIME 2024
30
34
AIME 2025
29
29
HMMT Feb 2023
24
31
HMMT Feb 2024
26
30
HMMT Feb 2025
25
32
BRUMO 2025
27
67
MATH-500
61

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is ahead overall, 36 to 33. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 24 and 17.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 30 versus 27. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 15.2 versus 8.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 47.8 versus 42.3. Inside this category, MATH-500 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 42.1 versus 38.4. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 38.5 versus 34.1. 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, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 33.4 versus 32.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 72 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) 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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