# Command R vs Ministral 8B

> Command R is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.4 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 1.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Command R's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/command-r-vs-ministral-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 13

## Summary

- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Command R scores higher in 3 categories and Ministral 8B in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Command R leads 31.0 to 12.6.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Command R.
- Ministral 8B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Command R | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Cohere | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 31.4 | 28.2 |
| Rank | 272 | 325 |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | $0.60 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Command R: 29.3 (#306)
- Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230)

| Benchmark | Command R | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1169 | 1202 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 37.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 17.9% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 45.2% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Command R: —
- Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148)

| Benchmark | Command R | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 11.1% |

## Reasoning

- Command R: 13.8 (#331)
- Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281)

| Benchmark | Command R | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1164 | 1191 |
| DTBench | 46.4% | 45.7% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 21.9% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 33.3% | — |
| LMCA | 9.2% | — |
| LiveBench | 27.5% | — |

## Math

- Command R: 28.0 (#246)
- Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267)

| Benchmark | Command R | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1155 | 1188 |
| LiveBench Math | 19.4% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 14.9% |

## Knowledge

- Command R: 31.0 (#221)
- Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297)

| Benchmark | Command R | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1138 | 1170 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 27.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.4% |
| MMLU | 65.2% | — |

## Multilingual

- Command R: 35.7 (#245)
- Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247)

| Benchmark | Command R | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1174 | 1165 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1182 | 1193 |
| LMArena Russian | 1174 | 1195 |
| LMArena French | 1162 | — |
| LMArena German | 1176 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1143 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1163 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1151 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Command R: 58.1 (#261)
- Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250)

| Benchmark | Command R | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1167 | 1161 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 55.6% | — |

## Long Context

- Command R: 36.3 (#231)
- Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227)

| Benchmark | Command R | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1198 | 1212 |

## Writing & Preference

- Command R: 38.2 (#254)
- Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246)

| Benchmark | Command R | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1187 | 1191 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1170 | 1175 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1163 | 1166 |
| LiveBench Language | 16.7% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Command R better than Ministral 8B?

Command R is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.4 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 1.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Command R's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Command R or Ministral 8B?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Command R lists at $0.15 and $0.60.

### Is Command R or Ministral 8B better for coding?

Ministral 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.0 versus 29.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Ministral 8B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Command R and Ministral 8B share?

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Command R has 29 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 8B has 17.