Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) vs MiniMax M1 80k

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) finishes one point ahead overall, 36 to 35. That is enough to call, but not enough to treat as a blowout. This matchup comes down to a few meaningful edges rather than one model dominating the board.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)'s sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 38.5 against 32.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MATH-500, 67 to 57. MiniMax M1 80k does hit back in multimodal & grounded, 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 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 8B (Reasoning) gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 80K for MiniMax M1 80k.

Quick Verdict

Pick Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. MiniMax M1 80k only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

MiniMax M1 80k

32.1

39
Terminal-Bench 2.0
30
41
BrowseComp
37
36
OSWorld-Verified
31

Coding

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

MiniMax M1 80k

13.8

24
HumanEval
28
17
SWE-bench Verified
16
16
LiveCodeBench
10
14
SWE-bench Pro
17

Multimodal & Grounded

MiniMax M1 80k

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

MiniMax M1 80k

39

28
MMMU-Pro
34
40
OfficeQA Pro
45

Reasoning

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

MiniMax M1 80k

41.7

32
SimpleQA
34
33
MuSR
32
70
BBH
64
44
LongBench v2
45
47
MRCRv2
46

Knowledge

MiniMax M1 80k

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

MiniMax M1 80k

31.3

30
MMLU
36
29
GPQA
35
27
SuperGPQA
33
25
OpenBookQA
31
54
MMLU-Pro
51
5
HLE
2
34
FrontierScience
39

Instruction Following

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

MiniMax M1 80k

68

70
IFEval
68

Multilingual

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

MiniMax M1 80k

59.1

63
MGSM
63
61
MMLU-ProX
57

Mathematics

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

MiniMax M1 80k

44.9

33
AIME 2023
36
35
AIME 2024
38
34
AIME 2025
37
29
HMMT Feb 2023
32
31
HMMT Feb 2024
34
30
HMMT Feb 2025
33
32
BRUMO 2025
35
67
MATH-500
57

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or MiniMax M1 80k?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is ahead overall, 36 to 35. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MATH-500, where the scores are 67 and 57.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or MiniMax M1 80k?

MiniMax M1 80k has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 31.3 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or MiniMax M1 80k?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 15.2 versus 13.8. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or MiniMax M1 80k?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 47.8 versus 44.9. Inside this category, MATH-500 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or MiniMax M1 80k?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 42.1 versus 41.7. Inside this category, BBH is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or MiniMax M1 80k?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 38.5 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, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or MiniMax M1 80k?

MiniMax M1 80k has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 39 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or MiniMax M1 80k?

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, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or MiniMax M1 80k?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 61.7 versus 59.1. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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