# Ministral 8B vs Mistral Large 3

> Mistral Large 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.6 to 27.8 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 3.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Large 3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/ministral-8b-vs-mistral-large-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 13

## Summary

- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Large 3 in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Large 3 leads 35.5 to 12.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Vectara Hallucination Rate: 7.4% for Ministral 8B and 14.5% for Mistral Large 3.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.10 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mistral Large 3.
- Mistral Large 3 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 27.8 | 38.6 |
| Rank | 321 | 172 |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.10 | $0.25 |
| Output $/M | $0.10 | $0.75 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Ministral 8B: 34.4 (#226)
- Mistral Large 3: 34.1 (#230)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | 1447 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1230 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Ministral 8B: 16.2 (#140)
- Mistral Large 3: —

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 11.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Ministral 8B: 17.7 (#279)
- Mistral Large 3: 14.6 (#314)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | 1429 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 50.9% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 7.5% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 23% |
| DTBench | 45.7% | — |

## Math

- Ministral 8B: 23.7 (#262)
- Mistral Large 3: 36.0 (#131)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1188 | 1415 |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Ministral 8B: 12.5 (#292)
- Mistral Large 3: 35.5 (#173)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | 14.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | 1421 |
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | — |

## Multimodal

- Ministral 8B: —
- Mistral Large 3: 37.6 (#65)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1222 |

## Multilingual

- Ministral 8B: 35.3 (#242)
- Mistral Large 3: 52.6 (#79)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | 1412 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | 1448 |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | 1412 |
| LMArena French | — | 1456 |
| LMArena German | — | 1438 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1399 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1384 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1437 |

## Instruction Following

- Ministral 8B: 60.7 (#245)
- Mistral Large 3: 74.1 (#104)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | 1402 |

## Long Context

- Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#222)
- Mistral Large 3: 43.1 (#102)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | 1413 |

## Writing & Preference

- Ministral 8B: 39.8 (#241)
- Mistral Large 3: 60.2 (#100)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | 1427 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | 1385 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | 1429 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1412 |

## FAQ

### Is Ministral 8B better than Mistral Large 3?

Mistral Large 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.6 to 27.8 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 3.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Large 3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Mistral Large 3?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.10 per million output tokens; Mistral Large 3 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.

### Is Ministral 8B or Mistral Large 3 better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (34.4 vs 34.1); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Large 3 does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Mistral Large 3 share?

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Large 3 has 24.