Llama 4 Scout vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Llama 4 Scout is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 42 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Llama 4 Scout's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 57.8 against 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 60 to 28. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) does hit back in coding, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Llama 4 Scout 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 Scout gives you the larger context window at 10M, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Llama 4 Scout if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Llama 4 Scout

Llama 4 Scout

40.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

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

Coding

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Llama 4 Scout

12.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

39
HumanEval
24
12
SWE-bench Verified
17
11
LiveCodeBench
16
15
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Llama 4 Scout

Llama 4 Scout

57.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

60
MMMU-Pro
28
55
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Llama 4 Scout

Llama 4 Scout

55

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

45
SimpleQA
32
43
MuSR
33
60
BBH
70
64
LongBench v2
44
66
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Llama 4 Scout

Llama 4 Scout

35.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

47
MMLU
30
46
GPQA
29
44
SuperGPQA
27
42
OpenBookQA
25
51
MMLU-Pro
54
2
HLE
5
44
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Llama 4 Scout

68

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

68
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Llama 4 Scout

59.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

63
MGSM
63
58
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Llama 4 Scout

Llama 4 Scout

51

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

47
AIME 2023
33
49
AIME 2024
35
48
AIME 2025
34
43
HMMT Feb 2023
29
45
HMMT Feb 2024
31
44
HMMT Feb 2025
30
46
BRUMO 2025
32
57
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Llama 4 Scout or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Scout is ahead overall, 42 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 60 and 28.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Llama 4 Scout or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Scout has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 35.6 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Llama 4 Scout or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 15.2 versus 12.9. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Llama 4 Scout or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Scout has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 51 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Llama 4 Scout or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Scout has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 55 versus 42.1. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Llama 4 Scout or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Scout has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 40.6 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 4 Scout or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Llama 4 Scout has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.8 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 4 Scout or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 70 versus 68. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Llama 4 Scout or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 61.7 versus 59.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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