Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B vs Ministral 3 8B

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

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 64 to 32. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 77.2 against 36.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 74 to 28.

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B 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. Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B gives you the larger context window at 10M, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

62.8

Ministral 3 8B

28.9

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
26
69
BrowseComp
36
58
OSWorld-Verified
27

Coding

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

43.8

Ministral 3 8B

14.2

66
HumanEval
23
42
SWE-bench Verified
16
41
LiveCodeBench
15
47
SWE-bench Pro
13

Multimodal & Grounded

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

66.9

Ministral 3 8B

32.4

61
MMMU-Pro
27
74
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

77.2

Ministral 3 8B

36.1

71
SimpleQA
28
69
MuSR
26
85
BBH
63
81
LongBench v2
38
85
MRCRv2
41

Knowledge

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

57

Ministral 3 8B

28

74
MMLU
28
73
GPQA
27
71
SuperGPQA
25
69
OpenBookQA
23
73
MMLU-Pro
52
15
HLE
3
67
FrontierScience
32

Instruction Following

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

84

Ministral 3 8B

69

84
IFEval
69

Multilingual

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

79.7

Ministral 3 8B

61.7

81
MGSM
63
79
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B

78

Ministral 3 8B

43.3

74
AIME 2023
30
76
AIME 2024
32
75
AIME 2025
33
70
HMMT Feb 2023
26
72
HMMT Feb 2024
28
71
HMMT Feb 2025
27
73
BRUMO 2025
29
84
MATH-500
60

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B is ahead overall, 64 to 32. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 74 and 28.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57 versus 28. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 43.8 versus 14.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 78 versus 43.3. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 77.2 versus 36.1. Inside this category, MRCRv2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.8 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, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 66.9 versus 32.4. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 84 versus 69. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 500B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.7 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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