o3-mini vs Ministral 3 3B

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

o3-mini is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 71 to 27. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o3-mini's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 87.3 against 36. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 86.9 to 24.

o3-mini is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.10 input / $4.40 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Ministral 3 3B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. o3-mini is the reasoning model in the pair, while Ministral 3 3B 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. o3-mini gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 3B.

Quick Verdict

Pick o3-mini if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

o3-mini

o3-mini

66.6

Ministral 3 3B

22.9

67
Terminal-Bench 2.0
19
74
BrowseComp
33
61
OSWorld-Verified
20

Coding

o3-mini

o3-mini

55.6

Ministral 3 3B

6.2

49.3
SWE-bench Verified
8
57
SWE-bench Pro
5
Coming soon
HumanEval
15
Coming soon
LiveCodeBench
7

Multimodal & Grounded

o3-mini

o3-mini

74.4

Ministral 3 3B

30.4

73
MMMU-Pro
25
76
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

o3-mini

o3-mini

81.1

Ministral 3 3B

30.1

82
LongBench v2
32
80
MRCRv2
35
Coming soon
SimpleQA
22
Coming soon
MuSR
20
Coming soon
BBH
57

Knowledge

o3-mini

o3-mini

70.8

Ministral 3 3B

24.5

86.9
MMLU
24
77.2
GPQA
23
66
FrontierScience
28
Coming soon
SuperGPQA
21
Coming soon
OpenBookQA
19
Coming soon
MMLU-Pro
48
Coming soon
HLE
1

Instruction Following

o3-mini

o3-mini

93.9

Ministral 3 3B

67

93.9
IFEval
67

Multilingual

o3-mini

o3-mini

73

Ministral 3 3B

59.7

73
MMLU-ProX
59
Coming soon
MGSM
61

Mathematics

o3-mini

o3-mini

87.3

Ministral 3 3B

36

87.3
AIME 2024
25
Coming soon
AIME 2023
23
Coming soon
AIME 2025
24
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2023
19
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2024
21
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2025
20
Coming soon
BRUMO 2025
22
Coming soon
MATH-500
53

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o3-mini or Ministral 3 3B?

o3-mini is ahead overall, 71 to 27. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 86.9 and 24.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o3-mini or Ministral 3 3B?

o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.8 versus 24.5. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o3-mini or Ministral 3 3B?

o3-mini has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 55.6 versus 6.2. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o3-mini or Ministral 3 3B?

o3-mini has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.3 versus 36. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, o3-mini or Ministral 3 3B?

o3-mini has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 81.1 versus 30.1. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, o3-mini or Ministral 3 3B?

o3-mini has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 66.6 versus 22.9. 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-mini or Ministral 3 3B?

o3-mini has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 74.4 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-mini or Ministral 3 3B?

o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, o3-mini or Ministral 3 3B?

o3-mini has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 73 versus 59.7. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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