# Ministral 8B vs Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct

> Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 28.8 to 27.8 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/ministral-8b-vs-phi-3-small-8k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 6 categories and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct in 2 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct leads 28.5 to 12.5.

## Snapshot

| | Ministral 8B | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 27.8 | 28.8 |
| Rank | 321 | 310 |
| Context | 128K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.10 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.10 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Ministral 8B: 34.4 (#226)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.4 (#313)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | 1102 |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 20.3% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Ministral 8B: 16.2 (#140)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 11.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Ministral 8B: 17.7 (#279)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.2 (#319)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | 1100 |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 15.9% |
| DTBench | 45.7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 30.3% |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 58.1% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 79.1% |
| HellaSwag | — | 77% |
| LiveBench | — | 24% |
| WinoGrande | — | 81.5% |

## Math

- Ministral 8B: 23.7 (#262)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 25.4 (#247)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1188 | 1151 |
| LiveBench Math | — | 17.6% |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Ministral 8B: 12.5 (#292)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#237)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | 1067 |
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 90.7% |
| MMLU | — | 75.7% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 88% |
| TriviaQA | — | 58.1% |

## Multilingual

- Ministral 8B: 35.3 (#242)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.6 (#267)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | 1058 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | 1061 |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | 1111 |
| LMArena French | — | 1134 |
| LMArena German | — | 1080 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 966 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 894 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1111 |

## Instruction Following

- Ministral 8B: 60.7 (#245)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 52.2 (#287)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | 1087 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 47.2% |

## Long Context

- Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#222)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#262)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | 1088 |

## Writing & Preference

- Ministral 8B: 39.8 (#241)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.3 (#279)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | 1110 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | 1083 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | 1068 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 12.9% |

## FAQ

### Is Ministral 8B better than Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct?

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 28.8 to 27.8 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Ministral 8B or Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better for coding?

Ministral 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 34.4 versus 27.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32.