# Ministral 3B vs Phi-4

> Phi-4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.9 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Phi-4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/ministral-3b-vs-phi-4
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 3B scores higher in 2 categories and Phi-4 in 1 category; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Phi-4 leads 32.5 to 10.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.4% for Ministral 3B and 64.9% for Phi-4.
- Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.04 per million input/output tokens, against $0.07 / $0.14 for Phi-4.

## Snapshot

| | Ministral 3B | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 25.6 | 30.9 |
| Rank | 336 | 269 |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.04 | $0.07 |
| Output $/M | $0.04 | $0.14 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Ministral 3B: —
- Phi-4: 33.8 (#237)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.5% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 30.7% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1231 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 55.4% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Ministral 3B: —
- Phi-4: 22.6 (#120)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 28.8% |
| BALROG | — | 11.6% |

## Reasoning

- Ministral 3B: 17.7 (#278)
- Phi-4: 17.0 (#287)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.08 | 130.43 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 1% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 47.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1220 |
| DTBench | 51.7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 45.2% |
| LMCA | 5.5% | — |
| LiveBench | — | 41.6% |

## Math

- Ministral 3B: 24.5 (#257)
- Phi-4: 19.6 (#279)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| MATH Level 5 | 14.4% | 64.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 13.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 42% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1246 |

## Knowledge

- Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#297)
- Phi-4: 32.5 (#204)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 25.3% | 56.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.3% | 3.7% |
| Confabulations | — | 29.4% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1203 |
| MMLU | — | 84.8% |

## Multilingual

- Ministral 3B: —
- Phi-4: 37.4 (#232)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1197 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1211 |
| LMArena French | — | 1223 |
| LMArena German | — | 1222 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1158 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1151 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1209 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1234 |

## Instruction Following

- Ministral 3B: —
- Phi-4: 60.6 (#246)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 58.4% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1201 |

## Long Context

- Ministral 3B: —
- Phi-4: 36.9 (#221)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1217 |

## Writing & Preference

- Ministral 3B: —
- Phi-4: 40.7 (#239)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1217 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1182 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 62.6% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1206 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 25.6% |

## FAQ

### Is Ministral 3B better than Phi-4?

Phi-4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.9 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Phi-4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Ministral 3B or Phi-4?

Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.04 per million output tokens; Phi-4 lists at $0.07 and $0.14.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 128K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Ministral 3B and Phi-4 share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 3B has 6 scored results on Noometry and Phi-4 has 37.