Z-1 vs Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

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

Z-1 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.

Z-1's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 50.5 against 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 52 to 30.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Z-1 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 Z-1 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

Z-1

Z-1

42.2

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

39
Terminal-Bench 2.0
39
49
BrowseComp
41
41
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Z-1

Z-1

26.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

44
HumanEval
24
33
SWE-bench Verified
17
22
LiveCodeBench
16
30
SWE-bench Pro
14

Multimodal & Grounded

Z-1

Z-1

50.5

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

46
MMMU-Pro
28
56
OfficeQA Pro
40

Reasoning

Z-1

Z-1

54.8

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

50
SimpleQA
32
48
MuSR
33
74
BBH
70
56
LongBench v2
44
57
MRCRv2
47

Knowledge

Z-1

Z-1

42.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

52
MMLU
30
51
GPQA
29
49
SuperGPQA
27
47
OpenBookQA
25
64
MMLU-Pro
54
6
HLE
5
51
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Z-1

Z-1

80

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

80
IFEval
70

Multilingual

Z-1

Z-1

72.7

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

74
MGSM
63
72
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Z-1

Z-1

60.9

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

52
AIME 2023
33
54
AIME 2024
35
53
AIME 2025
34
48
HMMT Feb 2023
29
50
HMMT Feb 2024
31
49
HMMT Feb 2025
30
51
BRUMO 2025
32
73
MATH-500
67

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Z-1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Z-1 is ahead overall, 47 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 52 and 30.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Z-1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Z-1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 42.7 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Z-1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Z-1 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 26.7 versus 15.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Z-1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Z-1 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 60.9 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Z-1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Z-1 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 54.8 versus 42.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Z-1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Z-1 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 42.2 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, Z-1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Z-1 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 50.5 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Z-1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Z-1 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 80 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Z-1 or Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)?

Z-1 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 72.7 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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