Llama 3 70B vs Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

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

Llama 3 70B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 45 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Llama 3 70B's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 59.6 against 35.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 50 to 16.

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Llama 3 70B 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 Llama 3 70B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

41.2

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

34

37
Terminal-Bench 2.0
33
48
BrowseComp
37
41
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

15.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

7.2

50
HumanEval
16
9
SWE-bench Verified
9
19
LiveCodeBench
8
14
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

52.3

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

30.4

50
MMMU-Pro
25
55
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

59.6

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

35.3

56
SimpleQA
26
54
MuSR
26
74
BBH
63
61
LongBench v2
37
61
MRCRv2
40

Knowledge

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

42.2

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

25.2

58
MMLU
25
58
GPQA
24
56
SuperGPQA
22
54
OpenBookQA
20
55
MMLU-Pro
49
2
HLE
1
54
FrontierScience
29

Instruction Following

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

77

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

68

77
IFEval
68

Multilingual

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

67.5

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

59.7

72
MGSM
61
65
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

63.3

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

40.9

58
AIME 2023
27
60
AIME 2024
29
59
AIME 2025
28
54
HMMT Feb 2023
23
56
HMMT Feb 2024
25
55
HMMT Feb 2025
24
57
BRUMO 2025
26
71
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B is ahead overall, 45 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 50 and 16.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 42.2 versus 25.2. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 15.8 versus 7.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 63.3 versus 40.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 59.6 versus 35.3. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 41.2 versus 34. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 52.3 versus 30.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 77 versus 68. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 67.5 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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