Compare/Ministral 3 3B vs Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B

Ministral 3 3BvsLlama 3.1 Instruct 8B

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

Mistral

Ministral 3 3B

Input
$0.1/M
Output
$0.1/M
Speed
160 tok/s
TTFT
0.40s
Meta

Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B

Input
$0.075/M
Output
$0.095/M
Speed
154 tok/s
TTFT
0.55s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B
Faster (tok/s)
Ministral 3 3B
Lower Latency
Ministral 3 3B
Benchmarks (7-5)
Ministral 3 3B

Pricing Comparison

MetricMinistral 3 3BLlama 3.1 Instruct 8B
Input ($/M tokens)$0.1$0.075
Output ($/M tokens)$0.1$0.095
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Ministral 3 3B$0.11
Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B$0.08

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Ministral 3 3B
160 tok/s
Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B
154 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Ministral 3 3B
0.40s
Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B
0.55s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
6.87.6
Coding Index
4.85.4
Math Index
22.04.3
GPQA Diamond
35.8%25.9%
MMLU-Pro
52.4%47.6%
LiveCodeBench
24.7%11.6%
AIME 2025
22.0%4.3%
MATH-500
51.9%
Humanity's Last Exam
5.3%5.1%
SciCode
14.4%13.2%
IFBench
26.8%28.6%
TerminalBench
0.0%0.8%
Ministral 3 3B7 wins
5 winsLlama 3.1 Instruct 8B

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Ministral 3 3B or Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B?

Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.08/M tokens vs $0.10/M for Ministral 3 3B.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Ministral 3 3B wins 7 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 5 for Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

Ministral 3 3B generates tokens faster at 160 tok/s vs 154 tok/s. Ministral 3 3B also has lower time-to-first-token (0.40s vs 0.55s).

When should I use Ministral 3 3B vs Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B?

Choose based on your priorities: Llama 3.1 Instruct 8B for lower cost, Ministral 3 3B for stronger benchmark performance, and Ministral 3 3B for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.