o3 vs Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

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

o3 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 70 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o3's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 82.6 against 35.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 87 to 24.

o3 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $10.00 input / $40.00 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. o3 gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick o3 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

o3

o3

69.9

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

34

71
Terminal-Bench 2.0
33
75
BrowseComp
37
65
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

o3

o3

49.1

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

7.2

78
HumanEval
16
50
SWE-bench Verified
9
40
LiveCodeBench
8
58
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

o3

o3

72.3

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

30.4

70
MMMU-Pro
25
75
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

o3

o3

82.6

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

35.3

84
SimpleQA
26
82
MuSR
26
86
BBH
63
82
LongBench v2
37
81
MRCRv2
40

Knowledge

o3

o3

66

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

25.2

86
MMLU
25
87
GPQA
24
85
SuperGPQA
22
83
OpenBookQA
20
75
MMLU-Pro
49
24
HLE
1
77
FrontierScience
29

Instruction Following

o3

o3

85

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

68

85
IFEval
68

Multilingual

o3

o3

81.1

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

59.7

83
MGSM
61
80
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

o3

o3

87.5

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

40.9

88
AIME 2023
27
90
AIME 2024
29
89
AIME 2025
28
84
HMMT Feb 2023
23
86
HMMT Feb 2024
25
85
HMMT Feb 2025
24
87
BRUMO 2025
26
88
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o3 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

o3 is ahead overall, 70 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 87 and 24.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o3 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 66 versus 25.2. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o3 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 49.1 versus 7.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o3 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.5 versus 40.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, o3 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 82.6 versus 35.3. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, o3 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 69.9 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, o3 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 72.3 versus 30.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o3 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 85 versus 68. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, o3 or Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.1 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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