Compare / Ministral 3 8B vs Qwen3 8B
Ministral 3 8B vs Qwen3 8B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Ministral 3 8B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 55.2 vs 48.5, although their likely ranges overlap, so the lead is not certain. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Ministral 3 8B wins 3 and Qwen3 8B wins 0. Both need about 6.8 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only Ministral 3 8B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.15 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.
Pick Ministral 3 8B if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you mostly write code
- you need math and reasoning
- you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
- you work with long documents
- you need image input
Pick Qwen3 8B if…
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Specifications
| Ministral 3 8B | Qwen3 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 55.2 (likely 51–60) | 48.5 (likely 44–53) |
| Lab | Mistral AI · Europe | Alibaba (Qwen) · China |
| Released | 2025-12-02 | 2025-04-29 |
| Parameters | 8B (dense) | 8.2B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~6.7 GB | ~6.8 GB |
| Context window | 256K tokens | 131K tokens |
| Input | text, image | text |
| Reasoning | Hybrid (thinking on/off) | Hybrid (thinking on/off) |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | $0.15 ($0.15 in, $0.15 out) | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 16.3K | 7.5M |
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 | Ministral 3 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 66.8 | 62.0 |
| AIME Math | 78.7 | 67.3 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 61.6 | 57.5 |
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, Ministral 3 8B or Qwen3 8B?
Ministral 3 8B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 55.2 vs 48.5, although their likely ranges overlap, so the lead is not certain. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Ministral 3 8B wins 3 and Qwen3 8B wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Only Ministral 3 8B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.15 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 6.8 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Ministral 3 8B has the longer context window: 256K tokens against 131K.
Can I use Ministral 3 8B and Qwen3 8B commercially?
Both are released under the Apache-2.0 license. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.