MiniMax M1 80k vs Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

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

MiniMax M1 80k is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 35 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

MiniMax M1 80k's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 39 against 30.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 28 to 16. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) does hit back in agentic, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while MiniMax M1 80k 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. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 80K for MiniMax M1 80k.

Quick Verdict

Pick MiniMax M1 80k if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if agentic is the priority or you need the larger 128K context window.

Agentic

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

MiniMax M1 80k

32.1

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

34

30
Terminal-Bench 2.0
33
37
BrowseComp
37
31
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

MiniMax M1 80k

MiniMax M1 80k

13.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

7.2

28
HumanEval
16
16
SWE-bench Verified
9
10
LiveCodeBench
8
17
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

MiniMax M1 80k

MiniMax M1 80k

39

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

30.4

34
MMMU-Pro
25
45
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

MiniMax M1 80k

MiniMax M1 80k

41.7

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

35.3

34
SimpleQA
26
32
MuSR
26
64
BBH
63
45
LongBench v2
37
46
MRCRv2
40

Knowledge

MiniMax M1 80k

MiniMax M1 80k

31.3

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

25.2

36
MMLU
25
35
GPQA
24
33
SuperGPQA
22
31
OpenBookQA
20
51
MMLU-Pro
49
2
HLE
1
39
FrontierScience
29

Instruction Following

Tie

MiniMax M1 80k

68

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

68

68
IFEval
68

Multilingual

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

MiniMax M1 80k

59.1

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

59.7

63
MGSM
61
57
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

MiniMax M1 80k

MiniMax M1 80k

44.9

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

40.9

36
AIME 2023
27
38
AIME 2024
29
37
AIME 2025
28
32
HMMT Feb 2023
23
34
HMMT Feb 2024
25
33
HMMT Feb 2025
24
35
BRUMO 2025
26
57
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, MiniMax M1 80k or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

MiniMax M1 80k is ahead overall, 35 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 28 and 16.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, MiniMax M1 80k or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

MiniMax M1 80k has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 31.3 versus 25.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, MiniMax M1 80k or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

MiniMax M1 80k has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 13.8 versus 7.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, MiniMax M1 80k or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

MiniMax M1 80k has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 44.9 versus 40.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, MiniMax M1 80k or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

MiniMax M1 80k has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 41.7 versus 35.3. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, MiniMax M1 80k or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 34 versus 32.1. 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, MiniMax M1 80k or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

MiniMax M1 80k has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 39 versus 30.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, MiniMax M1 80k or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

MiniMax M1 80k and Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) are effectively tied for instruction following here, both landing at 68 on average.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, MiniMax M1 80k or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 59.7 versus 59.1. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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