o3 vs Ministral 3 8B

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

o3 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 70 to 32. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o3's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 82.6 against 36.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 87 to 27.

o3 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $10.00 input / $40.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Ministral 3 8B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. o3 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. o3 gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 8B.

Quick Verdict

Pick o3 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

o3

o3

69.9

Ministral 3 8B

28.9

71
Terminal-Bench 2.0
26
75
BrowseComp
36
65
OSWorld-Verified
27

Coding

o3

o3

49.1

Ministral 3 8B

14.2

78
HumanEval
23
50
SWE-bench Verified
16
40
LiveCodeBench
15
58
SWE-bench Pro
13

Multimodal & Grounded

o3

o3

72.3

Ministral 3 8B

32.4

70
MMMU-Pro
27
75
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

o3

o3

82.6

Ministral 3 8B

36.1

84
SimpleQA
28
82
MuSR
26
86
BBH
63
82
LongBench v2
38
81
MRCRv2
41

Knowledge

o3

o3

66

Ministral 3 8B

28

86
MMLU
28
87
GPQA
27
85
SuperGPQA
25
83
OpenBookQA
23
75
MMLU-Pro
52
24
HLE
3
77
FrontierScience
32

Instruction Following

o3

o3

85

Ministral 3 8B

69

85
IFEval
69

Multilingual

o3

o3

81.1

Ministral 3 8B

61.7

83
MGSM
63
80
MMLU-ProX
61

Mathematics

o3

o3

87.5

Ministral 3 8B

43.3

88
AIME 2023
30
90
AIME 2024
32
89
AIME 2025
33
84
HMMT Feb 2023
26
86
HMMT Feb 2024
28
85
HMMT Feb 2025
27
87
BRUMO 2025
29
88
MATH-500
60

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o3 or Ministral 3 8B?

o3 is ahead overall, 70 to 32. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 87 and 27.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o3 or Ministral 3 8B?

o3 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 66 versus 28. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o3 or Ministral 3 8B?

o3 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 49.1 versus 14.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o3 or Ministral 3 8B?

o3 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.5 versus 43.3. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, o3 or Ministral 3 8B?

o3 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 82.6 versus 36.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, o3 or Ministral 3 8B?

o3 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 69.9 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, o3 or Ministral 3 8B?

o3 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 72.3 versus 32.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o3 or Ministral 3 8B?

o3 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 85 versus 69. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, o3 or Ministral 3 8B?

o3 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.1 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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