# Ministral 8B vs Sonar

> Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.5 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 6.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/ministral-8b-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Sonar leads 52.6 to 39.6.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.
- Ministral 8B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
- Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Ministral 8B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 28.2 | 38.5 |
| Rank | 325 | 187 |
| Context | 262K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $1 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230)
- Sonar: 35.7 (#221)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148)
- Sonar: —

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

## Reasoning

- Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281)
- Sonar: 21.1 (#227)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | — |
| DTBench | 45.7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267)
- Sonar: 33.7 (#200)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1188 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | — |

## Multilingual

- Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250)
- Sonar: 71.4 (#150)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | — |

## Long Context

- Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#167)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is Ministral 8B better than Sonar?

Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.5 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 6.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Sonar?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.

### Is Ministral 8B or Sonar better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (35.0 vs 35.7); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

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

### How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.