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Ministral 8B vs o3-mini

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

Ministral 8B specs · o3-mini specs
Verdict by category
  • Priceo3-mini

    o3-mini publishes pricing ($4.40 / 1M output tokens) while Ministral 8B does not.

  • Context windowo3-mini

    o3-mini accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× the room for long documents and codebases.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessMinistral 8B

    Ministral 8B ships open weights (Mistral Research License); o3-mini is API-only.

On balance o3-mini edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Ministral 8B's 1. o3-mini publishes pricing ($4.40 / 1M output tokens) while Ministral 8B does not. o3-mini accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Ministral 8B ships open weights (Mistral Research License); o3-mini is API-only.

o3-mini is the newer of the two, released 4 months after Ministral 8B, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Ministral 8B is usually picked for edge deployment and on device workloads, while o3-mini sees more deployments in reasoning and math. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecMinistral 8Bo3-mini
ProviderMistralOpenAI
ReleasedOct 2024Jan 2025
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens200K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$1.10 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$4.40 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,2023-10
Open weightsYes (Mistral Research License)No
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day, vs $9.90
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $99.00
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $191

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Ministral 8BPricing unavailable
  • o3-mini$0.330

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Ministral 8Bo3-mini
  • GPQA,79.7
Pick Ministral 8B if

Ministral 8B fits when…

  • Edge-optimized
  • Strong 8B-class quality
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Mistral Research License).
Pick o3-mini if

o3-mini fits when…

  • Reasoning at mid-tier cost
  • Fast for a thinking model
  • Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 128K for Ministral 8B.
Don't want either?

Consider Mistral Large 2

Mistral's flagship API model, strong on code and reasoning, EU-friendly hosting.

See Mistral Large 2 specsMinistral 8B vs Mistral Large 2o3-mini vs Mistral Large 2

Frequently asked

  • Is Ministral 8B or o3-mini cheaper?
    Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    o3-mini accepts 200K tokens vs 128K for Ministral 8B.
  • Is Ministral 8B or o3-mini better for coding?
    Both Ministral 8B and o3-mini are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    Ministral 8B ships open weights (Mistral Research License). o3-mini is API-only.
  • When were Ministral 8B and o3-mini released?
    Ministral 8B was released by Mistral on 2024-10-16. o3-mini was released by OpenAI on 2025-01-31.
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