Model comparison

Ministral 8B vs o4-mini

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 13× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Ministral 8B Mistral AI

28.2

Rank #325 Confirmed

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #132 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 0 categories and o4-mini in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where o4-mini leads 43.6 to 12.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.9% for Ministral 8B and 97.8% for o4-mini.
  • Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o4-mini.
  • Ministral 8B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 200K.
  • Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Ministral 8B and o4-mini specifications
Ministral 8Bo4-mini
ProviderMistral AIOpenAI
Noometry Index28.241.6
Released2024-10-012025-04-16
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window262K200K
Max output262K100K
Input $ / M tokens$0.15$1.10
Output $ / M tokens$0.15$4.40
Results tracked1760

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Category by category

Coding o4-mini leads

Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230), o4-mini: 40.9 (#127)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8Bo4-mini
LMArena Coding12021368
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)—45%
Aider Polyglot—72%
GSO—3.6%
WeirdML—52.6%
CadEval—62%
ALE-Bench—826.17
AlgoTune—1.72

Agentic & Tool Use o4-mini leads

Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148), o4-mini: 32.6 (#61)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8Bo4-mini
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard11.1%53.2%
GDPval—25.3%
METR Time Horizons—63.9%

Reasoning o4-mini leads

Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281), o4-mini: 24.6 (#162)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8Bo4-mini
LMArena Hard Prompts11911351
DTBench45.7%77.6%
ARC-AGI-2—6.1%
SimpleBench—38.7%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—67.6%
ARC-AGI-1—58.7%
CritPt—0.6%
Chess Puzzles—26%
EnigmaEval—9.2%
Mystery Game Puzzles—5%
LMCA—26.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index—145.64
ForecastBench—61.8

Math o4-mini leads

Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267), o4-mini: 40.8 (#89)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8Bo4-mini
LMArena Math11881389
MATH Level 514.9%97.8%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—36.1%
FrontierMath Tier 4—4.9%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—81.7%
Omni-MATH—72%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—24.8%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—6.3%

Knowledge o4-mini leads

Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297), o4-mini: 43.6 (#91)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8Bo4-mini
GPQA Diamond27.1%79.6%
Vectara Hallucination Rate7.4%18.6%
LMArena Expert11701343
Humanity's Last Exam—18.1%
SimpleQA Verified—19.6%
MMLU-Pro—82%
Confabulations—15.8%
GPQA (HELM)—73.5%

Multimodal Not comparable

Ministral 8B: —, o4-mini: 40.2 (#49)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8Bo4-mini
LMArena Vision—1194
GeoBench—64%
VPCT—57.5%

Multilingual o4-mini leads

Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247), o4-mini: 47.0 (#154)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8Bo4-mini
LMArena Non-English11651337
LMArena Chinese11931354
LMArena Russian11951334
LMArena French—1364
LMArena German—1336
LMArena Japanese—1308
LMArena Korean—1312
LMArena Spanish—1347

Instruction Following o4-mini leads

Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250), o4-mini: 75.2 (#68)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8Bo4-mini
LMArena Instruction Following11611321
IFEval—92.8%

Long Context o4-mini leads

Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227), o4-mini: 45.5 (#33)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8Bo4-mini
LMArena Longer Query12121315
Fiction.LiveBench—77.8%

Writing & Preference o4-mini leads

Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246), o4-mini: 54.0 (#152)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8Bo4-mini
LMArena Text11911353
LMArena Creative Writing11751294
LMArena Multi-Turn11661350
Short-Story Creative Writing—75%
WildBench—85.4%

Frequently asked questions

Is Ministral 8B better than o4-mini?

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 13× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or o4-mini?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; o4-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

Is Ministral 8B or o4-mini better for coding?

o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.9 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Ministral 8B does, with 262K tokens against 200K.

How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and o4-mini share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and o4-mini has 60.

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