Compare / Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker vs Ministral 3 14B
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker vs Ministral 3 14B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker and Ministral 3 14B are roughly tied on the Small LM Index (60.9 vs 60.0). On the 2 benchmarks both labs report, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker wins 2 and Ministral 3 14B wins 0. Both need about 11.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only Ministral 3 14B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.20 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.
Pick Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker if…
- you need math and reasoning
- you work with long documents
Pick Ministral 3 14B if…
- you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Specifications
| Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker | Ministral 3 14B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 60.9 (likely 59–63) | 60.0 (likely 56–64) |
| Lab | ServiceNow (Apriel) · United States | Mistral AI · Europe |
| Released | 2025-12-04 | 2025-12-02 |
| Parameters | 14.9B (dense) | 14B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~11.4 GB | ~10.6 GB |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 256K tokens |
| Input | text, image | text, image |
| Reasoning | Always thinks | Hybrid (thinking on/off) |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | $0.20 ($0.20 in, $0.20 out) |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 1.2K | 294.8K |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker | Ministral 3 14B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 79.0 | ≈ 79 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 73.0 | 71.2 |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 10.0 | ≈ 11 |
| AIME Math | 88.0 | 85.0 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | ≈ 70 | 64.6 |
| Terminal-Bench Agentic | 14.0 | — |
| τ²-Bench Agentic | 64.6 | — |
| MMMU-Pro Vision | 60.3 | — |
| BFCL Agentic | 63.5 | — |
| AA-LCR Long context | 50.0 | — |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker or Ministral 3 14B?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker and Ministral 3 14B are roughly tied on the Small LM Index (60.9 vs 60.0). On the 2 benchmarks both labs report, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker wins 2 and Ministral 3 14B wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Only Ministral 3 14B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.20 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 11.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker has the longer context window: 262K tokens against 256K.
Can I use Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker and Ministral 3 14B commercially?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker is released under MIT and Ministral 3 14B under Apache-2.0. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.