# Llama 3-8B vs MiniMax-M2

> MiniMax-M2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.4 to 25.5 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/llama-3-8b-vs-minimax-m2
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 15

## Summary

- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3-8B scores higher in 0 categories and MiniMax-M2 in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where MiniMax-M2 leads 37.0 to 7.8.

## Snapshot

| | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 25.5 | 37.4 |
| Rank | 344 | 204 |
| Context | — | 205K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | — | $1.20 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#289)
- MiniMax-M2: 39.3 (#159)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1152 | 1370 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 61% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1297 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 31.9% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 36.9% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 56.7% | — |
| MBPP+ | 54.8% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Llama 3-8B: —
- MiniMax-M2: 25.1 (#109)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 30% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 160.6 |

## Reasoning

- Llama 3-8B: 14.3 (#326)
- MiniMax-M2: 19.4 (#258)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1133 | 1357 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 57.8% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 14.8% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| DTBench | 43.9% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | 57.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 116.45 | — |
| ForecastBench | 58.6 | — |
| WinoGrande | 75.7% | — |

## Math

- Llama 3-8B: 8.8 (#323)
- MiniMax-M2: 37.3 (#160)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1151 | 1352 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 1.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 6.1% | — |

## Knowledge

- Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#308)
- MiniMax-M2: 37.0 (#163)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1113 | 1337 |
| GPQA Diamond | 26.1% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 82.8% | — |
| MMLU | 68.8% | — |
| OpenBookQA | 82.6% | — |
| TriviaQA | 67.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Llama 3-8B: 30.8 (#261)
- MiniMax-M2: 45.3 (#171)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1098 | 1313 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1076 | 1366 |
| LMArena French | 1159 | 1335 |
| LMArena German | 1104 | 1355 |
| LMArena Russian | 1109 | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1173 | 1326 |
| LMArena Japanese | 967 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1004 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Llama 3-8B: 58.4 (#260)
- MiniMax-M2: 70.2 (#166)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1127 | 1328 |

## Long Context

- Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#251)
- MiniMax-M2: 40.5 (#153)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1128 | 1331 |

## Writing & Preference

- Llama 3-8B: 37.5 (#256)
- MiniMax-M2: 53.0 (#162)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1166 | 1340 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1150 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1152 | 1361 |

## FAQ

### Is Llama 3-8B better than MiniMax-M2?

MiniMax-M2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.4 to 25.5 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Llama 3-8B or MiniMax-M2 better for coding?

MiniMax-M2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.3 versus 31.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Llama 3-8B and MiniMax-M2 share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3-8B has 34 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2 has 21.
