o3-mini vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

o3-mini is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 71 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o3-mini's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 74.4 against 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 86.9 to 30.

o3-mini is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.10 input / $4.40 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-mini gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick o3-mini 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-mini

o3-mini

66.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

67
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
74
BrowseComp
41
61
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

o3-mini

o3-mini

55.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

49.3
SWE-bench Verified
17
57
SWE-bench Pro
14
Coming soon
HumanEval
24
Coming soon
LiveCodeBench
16

Multimodal & Grounded

o3-mini

o3-mini

74.4

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

73
MMMU-Pro
28
76
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

o3-mini

o3-mini

81.1

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

82
LongBench v2
44
80
MRCRv2
47
Coming soon
SimpleQA
32
Coming soon
MuSR
33
Coming soon
BBH
70

Knowledge

o3-mini

o3-mini

70.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

86.9
MMLU
30
77.2
GPQA
29
66
FrontierScience
34
Coming soon
SuperGPQA
27
Coming soon
OpenBookQA
25
Coming soon
MMLU-Pro
54
Coming soon
HLE
5

Instruction Following

o3-mini

o3-mini

93.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

93.9
IFEval
70

Multilingual

o3-mini

o3-mini

73

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

73
MMLU-ProX
61
Coming soon
MGSM
63

Mathematics

o3-mini

o3-mini

87.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

87.3
AIME 2024
35
Coming soon
AIME 2023
33
Coming soon
AIME 2025
34
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2023
29
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2024
31
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2025
30
Coming soon
BRUMO 2025
32
Coming soon
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

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

o3-mini is ahead overall, 71 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 86.9 and 30.

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

o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.8 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

o3-mini has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 55.6 versus 15.2. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

o3-mini has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.3 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

o3-mini has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 81.1 versus 42.1. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

o3-mini has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 66.6 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-mini or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3-mini has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 74.4 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-mini or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

o3-mini has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 73 versus 61.7. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX 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.