Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
Step 3.5 Flash is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 66 to 60. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Step 3.5 Flash's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 47.1 against 35. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 77 to 62. Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Step 3.5 Flash is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.10 input / $0.30 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning). That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Step 3.5 Flash 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. Step 3.5 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning).
Pick Step 3.5 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Step 3.5 Flash
60.2
Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)
58.5
Step 3.5 Flash
47.1
Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)
35
Step 3.5 Flash
66.7
Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)
71.5
Step 3.5 Flash
78.3
Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)
69.2
Step 3.5 Flash
60.8
Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)
52.1
Step 3.5 Flash
87
Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)
81
Step 3.5 Flash
82.8
Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)
77.8
Step 3.5 Flash
84.5
Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)
75.2
Step 3.5 Flash is ahead overall, 66 to 60. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 77 and 62.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.8 versus 52.1. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 47.1 versus 35. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 84.5 versus 75.2. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 78.3 versus 69.2. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.2 versus 58.5. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.5 versus 66.7. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 81. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.8 versus 77.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Get notified when new models drop, benchmark scores change, or the leaderboard shifts. One email per week.
Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We only store derived location metadata for consent routing.