Mercury 2 vs Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

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

Mercury 2 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Mercury 2's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 80.1 against 35.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 75 to 16.

Mercury 2 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.25 input / $0.75 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning). That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone.

Quick Verdict

Pick Mercury 2 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

63.7

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

34

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
33
67
BrowseComp
37
62
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

41.1

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

7.2

75
HumanEval
16
46
SWE-bench Verified
9
38
LiveCodeBench
8
43
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

68.3

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

30.4

66
MMMU-Pro
25
71
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

80.1

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

35.3

82
SimpleQA
26
82
MuSR
26
87
BBH
63
77
LongBench v2
37
76
MRCRv2
40

Knowledge

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

57.2

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

25.2

78
MMLU
25
78
GPQA
24
76
SuperGPQA
22
74
OpenBookQA
20
72
MMLU-Pro
49
9
HLE
1
69
FrontierScience
29

Instruction Following

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

84

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

68

84
IFEval
68

Multilingual

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

79.7

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

59.7

81
MGSM
61
79
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

80.9

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

40.9

81
AIME 2023
27
83
AIME 2024
29
82
AIME 2025
28
77
HMMT Feb 2023
23
79
HMMT Feb 2024
25
78
HMMT Feb 2025
24
80
BRUMO 2025
26
82
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 is ahead overall, 65 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 75 and 16.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.2 versus 25.2. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 41.1 versus 7.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 80.9 versus 40.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 80.1 versus 35.3. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 63.7 versus 34. 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, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 68.3 versus 30.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 84 versus 68. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.7 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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