o3 vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

o3 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 70 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o3's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 82.6 against 42.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 87 to 29.

o3 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $10.00 input / $40.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning). That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. o3 gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick o3 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

o3

o3

69.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

71
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
75
BrowseComp
41
65
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

o3

o3

49.1

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

78
HumanEval
24
50
SWE-bench Verified
17
40
LiveCodeBench
16
58
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

o3

o3

72.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

70
MMMU-Pro
28
75
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

o3

o3

82.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

84
SimpleQA
32
82
MuSR
33
86
BBH
70
82
LongBench v2
44
81
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

o3

o3

66

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

86
MMLU
30
87
GPQA
29
85
SuperGPQA
27
83
OpenBookQA
25
75
MMLU-Pro
54
24
HLE
5
77
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

o3

o3

85

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

85
IFEval
70

Multilingual

o3

o3

81.1

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

83
MGSM
63
80
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

o3

o3

87.5

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

88
AIME 2023
33
90
AIME 2024
35
89
AIME 2025
34
84
HMMT Feb 2023
29
86
HMMT Feb 2024
31
85
HMMT Feb 2025
30
87
BRUMO 2025
32
88
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o3 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3 is ahead overall, 70 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 87 and 29.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o3 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 66 versus 30. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o3 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 49.1 versus 15.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o3 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.5 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, o3 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 82.6 versus 42.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, o3 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 69.9 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, o3 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 72.3 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o3 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 85 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, o3 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.1 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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