Nemotron-4 15B vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Nemotron-4 15B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 47 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Nemotron-4 15B's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 49.6 against 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 54 to 30.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Nemotron-4 15B 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-4 15B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Nemotron-4 15B 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-4 15B

Nemotron-4 15B

41.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

37
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
47
BrowseComp
41
42
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Nemotron-4 15B

Nemotron-4 15B

26.5

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

46
HumanEval
24
31
SWE-bench Verified
17
22
LiveCodeBench
16
30
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Nemotron-4 15B

Nemotron-4 15B

49.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

46
MMMU-Pro
28
54
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Nemotron-4 15B

Nemotron-4 15B

53.4

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

52
SimpleQA
32
50
MuSR
33
73
BBH
70
52
LongBench v2
44
51
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Nemotron-4 15B

Nemotron-4 15B

42.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

54
MMLU
30
53
GPQA
29
51
SuperGPQA
27
49
OpenBookQA
25
63
MMLU-Pro
54
5
HLE
5
50
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Nemotron-4 15B

Nemotron-4 15B

79

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

79
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Nemotron-4 15B

Nemotron-4 15B

72.4

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

75
MGSM
63
71
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Nemotron-4 15B

Nemotron-4 15B

61.1

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

54
AIME 2023
33
56
AIME 2024
35
55
AIME 2025
34
50
HMMT Feb 2023
29
52
HMMT Feb 2024
31
51
HMMT Feb 2025
30
53
BRUMO 2025
32
71
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Nemotron-4 15B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron-4 15B is ahead overall, 47 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 54 and 30.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Nemotron-4 15B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron-4 15B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 42.6 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Nemotron-4 15B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron-4 15B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 26.5 versus 15.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Nemotron-4 15B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron-4 15B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 61.1 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Nemotron-4 15B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron-4 15B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 53.4 versus 42.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Nemotron-4 15B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron-4 15B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 41.3 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-4 15B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron-4 15B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 49.6 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Nemotron-4 15B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron-4 15B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 79 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Nemotron-4 15B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Nemotron-4 15B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 72.4 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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