Phi-4 vs Ministral 3 3B

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

Phi-4 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 42 to 27. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Phi-4's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 55 against 6.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 82.6 to 15.

Ministral 3 3B gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 16K for Phi-4.

Quick Verdict

Pick Phi-4 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 128K context window.

Agentic

Phi-4

Phi-4

38.3

Ministral 3 3B

22.9

44
Terminal-Bench 2.0
19
35
BrowseComp
33
34
OSWorld-Verified
20

Coding

Phi-4

Phi-4

55

Ministral 3 3B

6.2

82.6
HumanEval
15
55
SWE-bench Pro
5
Coming soon
SWE-bench Verified
8
Coming soon
LiveCodeBench
7

Multimodal & Grounded

Phi-4

Phi-4

46.8

Ministral 3 3B

30.4

54
MMMU-Pro
25
38
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

Phi-4

Phi-4

31.3

Ministral 3 3B

30.1

30
LongBench v2
32
33
MRCRv2
35
Coming soon
SimpleQA
22
Coming soon
MuSR
20
Coming soon
BBH
57

Knowledge

Phi-4

Phi-4

53.8

Ministral 3 3B

24.5

84.8
MMLU
24
56.1
GPQA
23
52
FrontierScience
28
Coming soon
SuperGPQA
21
Coming soon
OpenBookQA
19
Coming soon
MMLU-Pro
48
Coming soon
HLE
1

Instruction Following

Coming soon

Comparable scores for this category are coming soon. One or both models do not have sourced results here yet.

Coming soon
IFEval
67

Multilingual

Phi-4

Phi-4

67.2

Ministral 3 3B

59.7

80.6
MGSM
61
60
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Coming soon

Comparable scores for this category are coming soon. One or both models do not have sourced results here yet.

Coming soon
AIME 2023
23
Coming soon
AIME 2024
25
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, Phi-4 or Ministral 3 3B?

Phi-4 is ahead overall, 42 to 27. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 82.6 and 15.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Phi-4 or Ministral 3 3B?

Phi-4 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 53.8 versus 24.5. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Phi-4 or Ministral 3 3B?

Phi-4 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 55 versus 6.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Phi-4 or Ministral 3 3B?

Phi-4 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 31.3 versus 30.1. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Phi-4 or Ministral 3 3B?

Phi-4 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 38.3 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, Phi-4 or Ministral 3 3B?

Phi-4 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 46.8 versus 30.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Phi-4 or Ministral 3 3B?

Phi-4 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 67.2 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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