Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 64 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 77.2 against 42.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 74 to 30.

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B gives you the larger context window at 10M, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if its workflow or ecosystem matters more than the raw scoreboard.

Agentic

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

62.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
69
BrowseComp
41
58
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

43.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

66
HumanEval
24
42
SWE-bench Verified
17
41
LiveCodeBench
16
47
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

66.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

61
MMMU-Pro
28
74
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

77.2

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

71
SimpleQA
32
69
MuSR
33
85
BBH
70
81
LongBench v2
44
85
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

57

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

74
MMLU
30
73
GPQA
29
71
SuperGPQA
27
69
OpenBookQA
25
73
MMLU-Pro
54
15
HLE
5
67
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

84

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

84
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

79.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

81
MGSM
63
79
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

78

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

74
AIME 2023
33
76
AIME 2024
35
75
AIME 2025
34
70
HMMT Feb 2023
29
72
HMMT Feb 2024
31
71
HMMT Feb 2025
30
73
BRUMO 2025
32
84
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B is ahead overall, 64 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 74 and 30.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 43.8 versus 15.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 78 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 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 77.2 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 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.8 versus 38.5. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 66.9 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 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 84 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.7 versus 61.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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