Nemotron Ultra 253B vs Ministral 3 8B

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

Nemotron Ultra 253B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 48 to 32. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Nemotron Ultra 253B's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 33.7 against 14.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Pro, 38 to 13.

Nemotron Ultra 253B 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. Ministral 3 8B gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 32K for Nemotron Ultra 253B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Nemotron Ultra 253B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 128K context window or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

46.7

Ministral 3 8B

28.9

46
Terminal-Bench 2.0
26
50
BrowseComp
36
45
OSWorld-Verified
27

Coding

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

33.7

Ministral 3 8B

14.2

41
HumanEval
23
31
SWE-bench Verified
16
30
LiveCodeBench
15
38
SWE-bench Pro
13

Multimodal & Grounded

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

44.7

Ministral 3 8B

32.4

37
MMMU-Pro
27
54
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

53.3

Ministral 3 8B

36.1

47
SimpleQA
28
45
MuSR
26
77
BBH
63
55
LongBench v2
38
56
MRCRv2
41

Knowledge

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

42.4

Ministral 3 8B

28

49
MMLU
28
48
GPQA
27
46
SuperGPQA
25
44
OpenBookQA
23
63
MMLU-Pro
52
11
HLE
3
49
FrontierScience
32

Instruction Following

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

78

Ministral 3 8B

69

78
IFEval
69

Multilingual

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

70.1

Ministral 3 8B

61.7

74
MGSM
63
68
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

Nemotron Ultra 253B

Nemotron Ultra 253B

59.7

Ministral 3 8B

43.3

49
AIME 2023
30
51
AIME 2024
32
50
AIME 2025
33
45
HMMT Feb 2023
26
47
HMMT Feb 2024
28
46
HMMT Feb 2025
27
48
BRUMO 2025
29
74
MATH-500
60

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron Ultra 253B is ahead overall, 48 to 32. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Pro, where the scores are 38 and 13.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 42.4 versus 28. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 33.7 versus 14.2. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 59.7 versus 43.3. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 53.3 versus 36.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 46.7 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 Ultra 253B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 44.7 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 Ultra 253B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 78 versus 69. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Ministral 3 8B?

Nemotron Ultra 253B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.1 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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