Qwen2.5-72B vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Qwen2.5-72B 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.

Qwen2.5-72B's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 83.5 against 47.8. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 83 to 30.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Qwen2.5-72B 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.

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen2.5-72B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

57.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

56
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
64
BrowseComp
41
55
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

43.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

75
HumanEval
24
46
SWE-bench Verified
17
40
LiveCodeBench
16
47
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

66.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

64
MMMU-Pro
28
70
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

75.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

80
SimpleQA
32
78
MuSR
33
81
BBH
70
72
LongBench v2
44
71
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

59.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

83
MMLU
30
82
GPQA
29
80
SuperGPQA
27
78
OpenBookQA
25
75
MMLU-Pro
54
11
HLE
5
70
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

85

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

85
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

80.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

84
MGSM
63
79
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

83.5

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

84
AIME 2023
33
86
AIME 2024
35
85
AIME 2025
34
80
HMMT Feb 2023
29
82
HMMT Feb 2024
31
81
HMMT Feb 2025
30
83
BRUMO 2025
32
84
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Qwen2.5-72B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen2.5-72B is ahead overall, 64 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 83 and 30.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Qwen2.5-72B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 59.8 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Qwen2.5-72B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen2.5-72B 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, Qwen2.5-72B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 83.5 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Qwen2.5-72B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 75.8 versus 42.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Qwen2.5-72B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.7 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, Qwen2.5-72B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 66.7 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Qwen2.5-72B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen2.5-72B 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, Qwen2.5-72B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.8 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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