Model comparison

DeepSeek-R1 vs Ministral 8B

DeepSeek-R1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 6.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when DeepSeek-R1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 11, 2026. 15 shared benchmarks.

DeepSeek-R1

DeepSeek

42.3

Rank #115 Confirmed

Ministral 8B

Mistral AI

28.2

Rank #325 Confirmed

Summary

They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-R1 scores higher in 9 categories and Ministral 8B in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where DeepSeek-R1 leads 44.5 to 12.6.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 96.6% for DeepSeek-R1 and 14.9% for Ministral 8B.
Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $2.15 for DeepSeek-R1.
Ministral 8B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 164K.
Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

DeepSeek-R1 and Ministral 8B specifications
	DeepSeek-R1	Ministral 8B
Provider	DeepSeek	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	42.3	28.2
Released	2025-01-20	2024-10-01
Weights	Proprietary	Open
Context window	164K	262K
Max output	64K	262K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.50	$0.15
Output $ / M tokens	$2.15	$0.15
Results tracked	52	17

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Category by category

Coding DeepSeek-R1 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 46.3 (#68), Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	DeepSeek-R1	Ministral 8B
LMArena Coding	1427	1202
Aider Polyglot	71.4%	—
SciCode	35.7%	—
WeirdML	41.6%	—
LiveBench Coding	66.7%	—
ALE-Bench	804.12	—
AlgoTune	1.7	—

Agentic & Tool Use DeepSeek-R1 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 30.7 (#75), Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	DeepSeek-R1	Ministral 8B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	—	11.1%
DeepResearch Bench	35.1%	—
BALROG	34.9%	—
METR Time Horizons	53.8%	—

Reasoning Too close to call

DeepSeek-R1: 18.6 (#278), Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	DeepSeek-R1	Ministral 8B
LMArena Hard Prompts	1416	1191
ARC-AGI-2	1.3%	—
SimpleBench	40.8%	—
Kagi LLM Benchmark	69.4%	—
ARC-AGI-1	21.2%	—
CritPt	1.1%	—
LiveBench Reasoning	83.2%	—
DTBench	—	45.7%
LiveBench Data Analysis	69.8%	—
Epoch Capabilities Index	141.29	—
ForecastBench	60	—
LiveBench	71.6%	—

Math DeepSeek-R1 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 43.8 (#79), Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	DeepSeek-R1	Ministral 8B
LMArena Math	1400	1188
MATH Level 5	96.6%	14.9%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	66.4%	—
Omni-MATH	42.4%	—
LiveBench Math	80.7%	—

Knowledge DeepSeek-R1 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 44.5 (#87), Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	DeepSeek-R1	Ministral 8B
GPQA Diamond	76.3%	27.1%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	11.3%	7.4%
LMArena Expert	1394	1170
MMLU-Pro	79.3%	—
Confabulations	12.7%	—
GPQA (HELM)	66.6%	—

Multilingual DeepSeek-R1 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 52.4 (#85), Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	DeepSeek-R1	Ministral 8B
LMArena Non-English	1412	1165
LMArena Chinese	1442	1193
LMArena Russian	1423	1195
LMArena French	1417	—
LMArena German	1404	—
LMArena Japanese	1391	—
LMArena Korean	1360	—
LMArena Spanish	1411	—

Instruction Following DeepSeek-R1 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 72.0 (#143), Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	DeepSeek-R1	Ministral 8B
LMArena Instruction Following	1382	1161
LiveBench Instruction Following	80.5%	—
IFEval	78.4%	—

Long Context DeepSeek-R1 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 45.4 (#36), Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	DeepSeek-R1	Ministral 8B
LMArena Longer Query	1391	1212
Fiction.LiveBench	75%	—

Writing & Preference DeepSeek-R1 leads

DeepSeek-R1: 61.4 (#88), Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	DeepSeek-R1	Ministral 8B
LMArena Text	1428	1191
LMArena Creative Writing	1405	1175
LMArena Multi-Turn	1405	1166
Short-Story Creative Writing	83%	—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	1500	—
WildBench	82.8%	—
LiveBench Language	48.5%	—

Frequently asked questions

Is DeepSeek-R1 better than Ministral 8B?

Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-R1 or Ministral 8B?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; DeepSeek-R1 lists at $0.50 and $2.15.

Is DeepSeek-R1 or Ministral 8B better for coding?

DeepSeek-R1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Ministral 8B does, with 262K tokens against 164K.

How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-R1 and Ministral 8B share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-R1 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 8B has 17.