Step 3.5 Flash vs Ministral 3 14B

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 55. 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 mathematics, where it averages 84.5 against 69.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 77 to 58. Ministral 3 14B 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. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Step 3.5 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 14B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Step 3.5 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 14B only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

Step 3.5 Flash

Step 3.5 Flash

60.2

Ministral 3 14B

48.4

62
Terminal-Bench 2.0
48
66
BrowseComp
55
54
OSWorld-Verified
44

Coding

Step 3.5 Flash

Step 3.5 Flash

47.1

Ministral 3 14B

33

77
HumanEval
58
48
SWE-bench Verified
37
45
LiveCodeBench
31
49
SWE-bench Pro
34

Multimodal & Grounded

Ministral 3 14B

Step 3.5 Flash

66.7

Ministral 3 14B

70.5

64
MMMU-Pro
70
70
OfficeQA Pro
71

Reasoning

Step 3.5 Flash

Step 3.5 Flash

78.3

Ministral 3 14B

63.6

82
SimpleQA
66
82
MuSR
64
83
BBH
74
74
LongBench v2
60
73
MRCRv2
60

Knowledge

Step 3.5 Flash

Step 3.5 Flash

60.8

Ministral 3 14B

50.1

84
MMLU
69
83
GPQA
68
81
SuperGPQA
66
79
OpenBookQA
64
76
MMLU-Pro
67
12
HLE
5
71
FrontierScience
60

Instruction Following

Step 3.5 Flash

Step 3.5 Flash

87

Ministral 3 14B

80

87
IFEval
80

Multilingual

Step 3.5 Flash

Step 3.5 Flash

82.8

Ministral 3 14B

76.8

86
MGSM
80
81
MMLU-ProX
75

Mathematics

Step 3.5 Flash

Step 3.5 Flash

84.5

Ministral 3 14B

69.7

85
AIME 2023
68
87
AIME 2024
70
86
AIME 2025
72
81
HMMT Feb 2023
64
83
HMMT Feb 2024
66
82
HMMT Feb 2025
65
84
BRUMO 2025
67
85
MATH-500
72

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Step 3.5 Flash or Ministral 3 14B?

Step 3.5 Flash is ahead overall, 66 to 55. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 77 and 58.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Step 3.5 Flash or Ministral 3 14B?

Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.8 versus 50.1. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Step 3.5 Flash or Ministral 3 14B?

Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 47.1 versus 33. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Step 3.5 Flash or Ministral 3 14B?

Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 84.5 versus 69.7. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Step 3.5 Flash or Ministral 3 14B?

Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 78.3 versus 63.6. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Step 3.5 Flash or Ministral 3 14B?

Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.2 versus 48.4. 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, Step 3.5 Flash or Ministral 3 14B?

Ministral 3 14B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.5 versus 66.7. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Step 3.5 Flash or Ministral 3 14B?

Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 80. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Step 3.5 Flash or Ministral 3 14B?

Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.8 versus 76.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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