# Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct vs StarCoder 2 3B

> Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct has enough public results to be ranked (#324); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/phi-3-mini-4k-instruct-vs-starcoder-2-3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct scores higher in 0 categories and StarCoder 2 3B in 1 category; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where StarCoder 2 3B leads 32.9 to 26.1.

## Snapshot

| | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Microsoft | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 27.4 | 35.8 |
| Rank | 324 | — |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 26.1 (#319)
- StarCoder 2 3B: 32.9

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| HumanEval+ | 59.1% | 27.4% |
| LiveBench Coding | 15.5% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1093 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 21.4% |
| MBPP+ | 54.2% | — |

## Reasoning

- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 13.6 (#326)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| WinoGrande | 70.8% | 57.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 26.8% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1072 | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 34.7% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | 52.8% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 71.7% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 88.01 |
| HellaSwag | 76.7% | — |
| LiveBench | 22.4% | — |

## Math

- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 24.5 (#258)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | 15.7% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1111 | — |
| GSM8K | — | 21.6% |

## Knowledge

- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 27.9 (#241)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 84.9% | 34.2% |
| MMLU | 68.8% | 36.6% |
| LMArena Expert | 1045 | — |
| OpenBookQA | 88% | — |
| TriviaQA | 64% | — |

## Multilingual

- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 26.5 (#275)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1021 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1021 | — |
| LMArena French | 1075 | — |
| LMArena German | 1044 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 935 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 905 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1022 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1084 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 48.0 (#298)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 39.1% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1053 | — |

## Long Context

- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 31.7 (#271)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1044 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 27.7 (#295)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1073 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1037 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1018 | — |
| LiveBench Language | 9.2% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct better than StarCoder 2 3B?

Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct has enough public results to be ranked (#324); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

### Is Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct or StarCoder 2 3B better for coding?

StarCoder 2 3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 32.9 versus 26.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct and StarCoder 2 3B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct has 35 scored results on Noometry and StarCoder 2 3B has 7.