Model comparison

GPT-5 Mini vs Ministral 8B

GPT-5 Mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5 Mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

GPT-5 Mini OpenAI

41.8

Rank #128 Confirmed

Ministral 8B Mistral AI

28.2

Rank #325 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5 Mini 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 GPT-5 Mini leads 45.6 to 12.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 97.8% for GPT-5 Mini and 14.9% for Ministral 8B.
  • Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $2 for GPT-5 Mini.
  • GPT-5 Mini accepts more context: 400K tokens versus 262K.
  • Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-5 Mini and Ministral 8B specifications
GPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
ProviderOpenAIMistral AI
Noometry Index41.828.2
Released2025-08-072024-10-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window400K262K
Max output128K262K
Input $ / M tokens$0.25$0.15
Output $ / M tokens$2$0.15
Results tracked6017

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Category by category

Coding GPT-5 Mini leads

GPT-5 Mini: 40.1 (#146), Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
LMArena Coding14061202
SWE-bench Verified64.7%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)59.8%—
SWE-bench Multilingual39.7%—
SciCode39.2%—
WeirdML52.7%—
ALE-Bench799.77—
AlgoTune1.38—

Agentic & Tool Use GPT-5 Mini leads

GPT-5 Mini: 31.1 (#70), Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard55.5%11.1%
Terminal-Bench34.8%—
Vending-Bench 2-31.18—

Reasoning GPT-5 Mini leads

GPT-5 Mini: 23.9 (#168), Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
LMArena Hard Prompts13801191
DTBench80.5%45.7%
ARC-AGI-24.4%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark70.3%—
ARC-AGI-154.3%—
CritPt0%—
Chess Puzzles30%—
EnigmaEval8.2%—
Mystery Game Puzzles10%—
LMCA34.2%—
Epoch Capabilities Index145.52—
ForecastBench61—

Math GPT-5 Mini leads

GPT-5 Mini: 46.7 (#69), Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
LMArena Math13781188
MATH Level 597.8%14.9%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)46.7%—
FrontierMath Tier 412.2%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202586.7%—
ProofBench9%—
Omni-MATH72.2%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)27.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)6.3%—

Knowledge GPT-5 Mini leads

GPT-5 Mini: 45.6 (#86), Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
GPQA Diamond75%27.1%
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.9%7.4%
LMArena Expert13791170
Humanity's Last Exam19.4%—
SimpleQA Verified21.6%—
MMLU-Pro83.5%—
Confabulations13.3%—
GPQA (HELM)75.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-5 Mini: 35.6 (#85), Ministral 8B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
LMArena Vision1202—
VPCT40.2%—

Multilingual GPT-5 Mini leads

GPT-5 Mini: 48.9 (#137), Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
LMArena Non-English13631165
LMArena Chinese13851193
LMArena Russian13621195
LMArena French1386—
LMArena German1366—
LMArena Japanese1341—
LMArena Korean1308—
LMArena Spanish1355—

Instruction Following GPT-5 Mini leads

GPT-5 Mini: 76.2 (#46), Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
LMArena Instruction Following13571161
IFEval92.7%—

Long Context GPT-5 Mini leads

GPT-5 Mini: 41.9 (#132), Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
LMArena Longer Query13551212
Fiction.LiveBench69.4%—

Writing & Preference GPT-5 Mini leads

GPT-5 Mini: 55.2 (#148), Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 MiniMinistral 8B
LMArena Text13731191
LMArena Creative Writing13251175
LMArena Multi-Turn13631166
Short-Story Creative Writing83.1%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1313—
WildBench85.5%—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-5 Mini better than Ministral 8B?

GPT-5 Mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5 Mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, GPT-5 Mini or Ministral 8B?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; GPT-5 Mini lists at $0.25 and $2.

Is GPT-5 Mini or Ministral 8B better for coding?

GPT-5 Mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-5 Mini does, with 400K tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-5 Mini and Ministral 8B share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 Mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 8B has 17.

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