Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) vs Ministral 3 8B

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

Sibling matchup inside the Ministral 3 8B family.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) and Ministral 3 8B sit in the same Ministral 3 8B family. This page is less about two unrelated model lineages and more about how the siblings trade off on benchmark shape, token costs, and practical limits like context window.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 36 to 32. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)'s sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 38.5 against 28.9. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is Terminal-Bench 2.0, 39 to 26.

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) makes more sense if agentic is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile, while Ministral 3 8B is the cleaner fit if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

Ministral 3 8B

28.9

39
Terminal-Bench 2.0
26
41
BrowseComp
36
36
OSWorld-Verified
27

Coding

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

Ministral 3 8B

14.2

24
HumanEval
23
17
SWE-bench Verified
16
16
LiveCodeBench
15
14
SWE-bench Pro
13

Multimodal & Grounded

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

Ministral 3 8B

32.4

28
MMMU-Pro
27
40
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

Ministral 3 8B

36.1

32
SimpleQA
28
33
MuSR
26
70
BBH
63
44
LongBench v2
38
47
MRCRv2
41

Knowledge

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

Ministral 3 8B

28

30
MMLU
28
29
GPQA
27
27
SuperGPQA
25
25
OpenBookQA
23
54
MMLU-Pro
52
5
HLE
3
34
FrontierScience
32

Instruction Following

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

Ministral 3 8B

69

70
IFEval
69

Multilingual

Tie

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

Ministral 3 8B

61.7

63
MGSM
63
61
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

Ministral 3 8B

43.3

33
AIME 2023
30
35
AIME 2024
32
34
AIME 2025
33
29
HMMT Feb 2023
26
31
HMMT Feb 2024
28
30
HMMT Feb 2025
27
32
BRUMO 2025
29
67
MATH-500
60

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) and Ministral 3 8B are sibling variants in the Ministral 3 8B family, so the right pick depends on whether you value the better benchmark line, cheaper tokens, or the larger context window. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is ahead overall 36 to 32.

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 30 versus 28. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 15.2 versus 14.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 47.8 versus 43.3. Inside this category, MATH-500 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 42.1 versus 36.1. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 38.5 versus 28.9. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or Ministral 3 8B?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 33.4 versus 32.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 70 versus 69. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) and Ministral 3 8B are effectively tied for multilingual tasks here, both landing at 61.7 on average.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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