Llama 3 70B vs Ministral 3 8B (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 36. 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 multimodal & grounded, where it averages 52.3 against 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 58 to 29.

Ministral 3 8B (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 8B (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 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

37
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
48
BrowseComp
41
41
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

15.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

50
HumanEval
24
9
SWE-bench Verified
17
19
LiveCodeBench
16
14
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

52.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

50
MMMU-Pro
28
55
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

59.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

56
SimpleQA
32
54
MuSR
33
74
BBH
70
61
LongBench v2
44
61
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

42.2

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

58
MMLU
30
58
GPQA
29
56
SuperGPQA
27
54
OpenBookQA
25
55
MMLU-Pro
54
2
HLE
5
54
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

77

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

77
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

67.5

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

72
MGSM
63
65
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Llama 3 70B

Llama 3 70B

63.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

58
AIME 2023
33
60
AIME 2024
35
59
AIME 2025
34
54
HMMT Feb 2023
29
56
HMMT Feb 2024
31
55
HMMT Feb 2025
30
57
BRUMO 2025
32
71
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B is ahead overall, 45 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 58 and 29.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Llama 3 70B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 42.2 versus 30. 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 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 15.8 versus 15.2. 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 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 63.3 versus 47.8. 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 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 59.6 versus 42.1. 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 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 41.2 versus 38.5. 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 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 52.3 versus 33.4. 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 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 77 versus 70. 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 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 70B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 67.5 versus 61.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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