Model comparison

DeepSeek-R1 vs Ministral 3B

DeepSeek-R1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 26.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 9.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when DeepSeek-R1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 4 shared benchmarks.

DeepSeek-R1 DeepSeek

42.3

Rank #115 Confirmed

Ministral 3B Mistral AI

26.2

Rank #338 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-R1 scores higher in 3 categories and Ministral 3B in 0 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where DeepSeek-R1 leads 44.5 to 10.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 96.6% for DeepSeek-R1 and 14.4% for Ministral 3B.
  • Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.10 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $2.15 for DeepSeek-R1.
  • DeepSeek-R1 accepts more context: 164K tokens versus 131K.
  • Ministral 3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

DeepSeek-R1 and Ministral 3B specifications
DeepSeek-R1Ministral 3B
ProviderDeepSeekMistral AI
Noometry Index42.326.2
Released2025-01-202024-10-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window164K131K
Max output64K262K
Input $ / M tokens$0.50$0.10
Output $ / M tokens$2.15$0.10
Results tracked526

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

DeepSeek-R1: 46.3 (#68), Ministral 3B: —

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1Ministral 3B
Aider Polyglot71.4%—
SciCode35.7%—
WeirdML41.6%—
LiveBench Coding66.7%—
LMArena Coding1427—
ALE-Bench804.12—
AlgoTune1.7—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

DeepSeek-R1: 30.7 (#75), Ministral 3B: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1Ministral 3B
DeepResearch Bench35.1%—
BALROG34.9%—
METR Time Horizons53.8%—

Reasoning Too close to call

DeepSeek-R1: 18.6 (#278), Ministral 3B: 18.4 (#282)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1Ministral 3B
Epoch Capabilities Index141.29118.1
ARC-AGI-21.3%—
SimpleBench40.8%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark69.4%—
ARC-AGI-121.2%—
CritPt1.1%—
LiveBench Reasoning83.2%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1416—
DTBench—51.7%
LiveBench Data Analysis69.8%—
LMCA—5.5%
ForecastBench60—
LiveBench71.6%—

Math DeepSeek-R1 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 43.8 (#79), Ministral 3B: 26.6 (#258)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1Ministral 3B
MATH Level 596.6%14.4%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202566.4%—
Omni-MATH42.4%—
LiveBench Math80.7%—
LMArena Math1400—

Knowledge DeepSeek-R1 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 44.5 (#87), Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#302)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1Ministral 3B
GPQA Diamond76.3%25.3%
Vectara Hallucination Rate11.3%7.3%
MMLU-Pro79.3%—
Confabulations12.7%—
GPQA (HELM)66.6%—
LMArena Expert1394—

Multilingual Not comparable

DeepSeek-R1: 52.4 (#85), Ministral 3B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1Ministral 3B
LMArena Non-English1412—
LMArena Chinese1442—
LMArena French1417—
LMArena German1404—
LMArena Japanese1391—
LMArena Korean1360—
LMArena Russian1423—
LMArena Spanish1411—

Instruction Following Not comparable

DeepSeek-R1: 72.0 (#143), Ministral 3B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1Ministral 3B
LiveBench Instruction Following80.5%—
IFEval78.4%—
LMArena Instruction Following1382—

Long Context Not comparable

DeepSeek-R1: 45.4 (#36), Ministral 3B: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1Ministral 3B
Fiction.LiveBench75%—
LMArena Longer Query1391—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

DeepSeek-R1: 61.4 (#88), Ministral 3B: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1Ministral 3B
LMArena Text1428—
LMArena Creative Writing1405—
Short-Story Creative Writing83%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1500—
WildBench82.8%—
LMArena Multi-Turn1405—
LiveBench Language48.5%—

Frequently asked questions

Is DeepSeek-R1 better than Ministral 3B?

DeepSeek-R1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 26.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 9.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when DeepSeek-R1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-R1 or Ministral 3B?

Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.10 per million output tokens; DeepSeek-R1 lists at $0.50 and $2.15.

Which has the bigger context window?

DeepSeek-R1 does, with 164K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-R1 and Ministral 3B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-R1 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 3B has 6.

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