Seed 1.6 vs Ministral 3 3B

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

Seed 1.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 27. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Seed 1.6's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 79.6 against 30.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 80 to 25.

Seed 1.6 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.25 input / $2.00 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. Seed 1.6 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. Seed 1.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 3B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Seed 1.6 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

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

62.3

Ministral 3 3B

22.9

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
19
67
BrowseComp
33
58
OSWorld-Verified
20

Coding

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

42.4

Ministral 3 3B

6.2

64
HumanEval
15
46
SWE-bench Verified
8
38
LiveCodeBench
7
46
SWE-bench Pro
5

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

79.6

Ministral 3 3B

30.4

80
MMMU-Pro
25
79
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

74.5

Ministral 3 3B

30.1

69
SimpleQA
22
69
MuSR
20
86
BBH
57
77
LongBench v2
32
78
MRCRv2
35

Knowledge

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

56.4

Ministral 3 3B

24.5

73
MMLU
24
72
GPQA
23
70
SuperGPQA
21
68
OpenBookQA
19
75
MMLU-Pro
48
11
HLE
1
68
FrontierScience
28

Instruction Following

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

87

Ministral 3 3B

67

87
IFEval
67

Multilingual

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

83.4

Ministral 3 3B

59.7

88
MGSM
61
81
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

75.9

Ministral 3 3B

36

72
AIME 2023
23
74
AIME 2024
25
73
AIME 2025
24
68
HMMT Feb 2023
19
70
HMMT Feb 2024
21
69
HMMT Feb 2025
20
71
BRUMO 2025
22
82
MATH-500
53

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Seed 1.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Seed 1.6 is ahead overall, 65 to 27. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 80 and 25.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Seed 1.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.4 versus 24.5. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Seed 1.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 42.4 versus 6.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Seed 1.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 75.9 versus 36. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Seed 1.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 74.5 versus 30.1. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Seed 1.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.3 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, Seed 1.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 30.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Seed 1.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Seed 1.6 or Ministral 3 3B?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 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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