Nemotron 3 Nano 30B vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 45 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 63.7 against 47.8. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 57 to 30.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Nemotron 3 Nano 30B 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. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 32K for Nemotron 3 Nano 30B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Nemotron 3 Nano 30B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 128K context window or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

39.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

38
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
43
BrowseComp
41
39
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

22

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

49
HumanEval
24
26
SWE-bench Verified
17
16
LiveCodeBench
16
27
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

45.2

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

38
MMMU-Pro
28
54
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

54

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

54
SimpleQA
32
52
MuSR
33
72
BBH
70
51
LongBench v2
44
51
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

43.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

57
MMLU
30
56
GPQA
29
54
SuperGPQA
27
52
OpenBookQA
25
65
MMLU-Pro
54
1
HLE
5
54
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

78

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

78
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

71.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

75
MGSM
63
70
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B

63.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

57
AIME 2023
33
59
AIME 2024
35
58
AIME 2025
34
53
HMMT Feb 2023
29
55
HMMT Feb 2024
31
54
HMMT Feb 2025
30
56
BRUMO 2025
32
73
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B is ahead overall, 45 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 57 and 30.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 43.8 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 22 versus 15.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 63.7 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 54 versus 42.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 39.6 versus 38.5. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 45.2 versus 33.4. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 78 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.8 versus 61.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

Weekly LLM Benchmark Digest

Get notified when new models drop, benchmark scores change, or the leaderboard shifts. One email per week.

Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We only store derived location metadata for consent routing.