Qwen3.5 397B vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Qwen3.5 397B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 62 to 36. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Qwen3.5 397B's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 75.9 against 42.1. 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 Qwen3.5 397B 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 Qwen3.5 397B 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

Qwen3.5 397B

Qwen3.5 397B

56.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

58
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
62
BrowseComp
41
52
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Qwen3.5 397B

Qwen3.5 397B

40.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

75
HumanEval
24
42
SWE-bench Verified
17
39
LiveCodeBench
16
42
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Qwen3.5 397B

Qwen3.5 397B

61.4

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

56
MMMU-Pro
28
68
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Qwen3.5 397B

Qwen3.5 397B

75.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

80
SimpleQA
32
78
MuSR
33
82
BBH
70
72
LongBench v2
44
71
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Qwen3.5 397B

Qwen3.5 397B

59.3

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

83
MMLU
30
82
GPQA
29
80
SuperGPQA
27
78
OpenBookQA
25
73
MMLU-Pro
54
10
HLE
5
71
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Qwen3.5 397B

Qwen3.5 397B

82

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

82
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Qwen3.5 397B

Qwen3.5 397B

78.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

82
MGSM
63
77
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Qwen3.5 397B

Qwen3.5 397B

81.6

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

83
AIME 2023
33
85
AIME 2024
35
84
AIME 2025
34
79
HMMT Feb 2023
29
81
HMMT Feb 2024
31
80
HMMT Feb 2025
30
82
BRUMO 2025
32
81
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Qwen3.5 397B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B is ahead overall, 62 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 83 and 30.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Qwen3.5 397B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 59.3 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Qwen3.5 397B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 40.7 versus 15.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Qwen3.5 397B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 81.6 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Qwen3.5 397B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 75.9 versus 42.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Qwen3.5 397B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.9 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, Qwen3.5 397B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 61.4 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Qwen3.5 397B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 82 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Qwen3.5 397B or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.8 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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