Llama 4 Maverick vs Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

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

Llama 4 Maverick is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 43 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Llama 4 Maverick's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 56.8 against 30.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 59 to 25.

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Llama 4 Maverick 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. Llama 4 Maverick gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Llama 4 Maverick 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 4 Maverick

Llama 4 Maverick

40.9

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

34

37
Terminal-Bench 2.0
33
51
BrowseComp
37
38
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

Llama 4 Maverick

Llama 4 Maverick

15.7

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

7.2

38
HumanEval
16
13
SWE-bench Verified
9
15
LiveCodeBench
8
17
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

Llama 4 Maverick

Llama 4 Maverick

56.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

30.4

59
MMMU-Pro
25
54
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

Llama 4 Maverick

Llama 4 Maverick

54

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

35.3

44
SimpleQA
26
42
MuSR
26
63
BBH
63
63
LongBench v2
37
63
MRCRv2
40

Knowledge

Llama 4 Maverick

Llama 4 Maverick

36.5

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

25.2

46
MMLU
25
45
GPQA
24
43
SuperGPQA
22
41
OpenBookQA
20
53
MMLU-Pro
49
4
HLE
1
45
FrontierScience
29

Instruction Following

Tie

Llama 4 Maverick

68

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

68

68
IFEval
68

Multilingual

Llama 4 Maverick

Llama 4 Maverick

59.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

59.7

63
MGSM
61
58
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Llama 4 Maverick

Llama 4 Maverick

51.3

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

40.9

46
AIME 2023
27
48
AIME 2024
29
47
AIME 2025
28
42
HMMT Feb 2023
23
44
HMMT Feb 2024
25
43
HMMT Feb 2025
24
45
BRUMO 2025
26
59
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Llama 4 Maverick or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Maverick is ahead overall, 43 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 59 and 25.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Llama 4 Maverick or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Maverick has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 36.5 versus 25.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Llama 4 Maverick or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Maverick has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 15.7 versus 7.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Llama 4 Maverick or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Maverick has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 51.3 versus 40.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Llama 4 Maverick or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Maverick has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 54 versus 35.3. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Llama 4 Maverick or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Maverick has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 40.9 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 4 Maverick or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Maverick has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.8 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 4 Maverick or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Maverick and Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) are effectively tied for instruction following here, both landing at 68 on average.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Llama 4 Maverick or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Maverick has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 59.8 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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