Noometry

Model comparison

Gemini 3 Flash Preview vs Ministral 8B

Gemini 3 Flash Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 52.3 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 7.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3 Flash Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 15 shared benchmarks.

Gemini 3 Flash Preview Google

52.3

Rank #40 Confirmed

Ministral 8B Mistral AI

28.2

Rank #325 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3 Flash Preview scores higher in 9 categories and Ministral 8B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads 58.8 to 12.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 89.4% for Gemini 3 Flash Preview and 27.1% for Ministral 8B.
  • Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $3 for Gemini 3 Flash Preview.
  • Gemini 3 Flash Preview accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 262K.
  • Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Gemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
ProviderGoogleMistral AI
Noometry Index52.328.2
Released2025-12-172024-10-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1.05M262K
Max output66K262K
Input $ / M tokens$0.50$0.15
Output $ / M tokens$3$0.15
Results tracked5917

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Category by category

Coding Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 50.9 (#42), Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
LMArena Coding14601202
SWE-bench Verified75.4%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.8%—
LMArena WebDev1439—
SWE-bench Multilingual72.7%—
GSO9.8%—
WeirdML61.6%—
ALE-Bench1,367—

Agentic & Tool Use Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 38.7 (#29), Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
Terminal-Bench64.3%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—11.1%
τ²-bench Airline82.5%—
τ²-bench Banking27.3%—
τ²-bench Retail76.8%—
τ²-bench Telecom91.2%—
DeepResearch Bench49.8%—
BALROG48.1%—
GDP.pdf10%—
LMArena Search1198—
Vending-Bench 23,635—

Reasoning Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 49.2 (#37), Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
LMArena Hard Prompts14651191
DTBench89.1%45.7%
ARC-AGI-233.6%—
SimpleBench61.1%—
NYT Connections (extended)83.1%—
ARC-AGI-184.7%—
Chess Puzzles40%—
Mystery Game Puzzles26%—
LMCA43.1%—
Epoch Capabilities Index151.8—
ForecastBench58.5—

Math Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 51.7 (#55), Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
LMArena Math14731188
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)51.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 417.1%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions67.6%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202595.6%—
ProofBench15%—
MATH Level 5—14.9%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)35.6%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%—

Knowledge Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 58.8 (#33), Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
GPQA Diamond89.4%27.1%
Vectara Hallucination Rate13.5%7.4%
LMArena Expert14621170
SimpleQA Verified66.8%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 45.5 (#16), Ministral 8B: —

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
LMArena Vision1285—
GeoBench88%—
VPCT72.6%—
Blueprint-Bench 20%—
LMArena Document1413—

Multilingual Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 55.7 (#27), Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
LMArena Non-English14581165
LMArena Chinese15111193
LMArena Russian14801195
LMArena French1477—
LMArena German1497—
LMArena Japanese1489—
LMArena Korean1443—
LMArena Spanish1469—

Instruction Following Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 75.7 (#56), Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
LMArena Instruction Following14371161

Long Context Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 44.4 (#67), Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
LMArena Longer Query14521212

Writing & Preference Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 65.5 (#45), Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewMinistral 8B
LMArena Text14661191
LMArena Creative Writing14571175
LMArena Multi-Turn14711166

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemini 3 Flash Preview better than Ministral 8B?

Gemini 3 Flash Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 52.3 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 7.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3 Flash Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Gemini 3 Flash Preview or Ministral 8B?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Gemini 3 Flash Preview lists at $0.50 and $3.

Is Gemini 3 Flash Preview or Ministral 8B better for coding?

Gemini 3 Flash Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.9 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3 Flash Preview does, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Gemini 3 Flash Preview and Ministral 8B share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3 Flash Preview has 59 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 8B has 17.

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