Ministral 3 8B
Analysis Summary
Ministral 3 8B is a compact Mistral model designed for economical deployment. Its coding results are stronger than its general reasoning profile, and the $0.15 per million token price for both input and output makes it practical for high-volume, narrowly scoped processing.
It can handle simple code transformations, extraction, classification, and short content workflows with appropriate checks. Weak long-context, instruction-following, terminal, and agentic results limit its usefulness for autonomous development, complex SEO planning, or high-stakes customer communication. Use it as a low-cost utility model where prompts and outputs can be tightly controlled, rather than as a flexible primary assistant.
Assessed September 7, 2026
Editorial notes
Ministral 3 8B offers inexpensive inference at $0.15 per million tokens and better coding than the smaller Ministral variants. Limited reasoning, long-context, and agentic performance keep it suited to constrained automation rather than complex client work.
Rankings consider pricing, capabilities, benchmarks, and real-world applicability and are refreshed as new models launch. Feedback?
DFO Verdict
Ministral 3 8B offers inexpensive inference at $0.15 per million tokens and better coding than the smaller Ministral variants. Limited reasoning, long-context, and agentic performance keep it suited to constrained automation rather than complex client work.
Benchmark scores
Magenta = intelligence · Ink = technical/agentic · Cyan = content & long-context · Grey = community benchmarks. Data: Artificial Analysis, Hugging Face.
5.5 Intelligence Index·9.7 Coding Index·0.6 Agentic Index·31.7 Math Index
How Ministral 3 8B compares
Ministral 3 8B ranks #384 of 438 AI models we track for overall intelligence, #186 of 210 for coding, #185 of 192 for agentic tasks. At $0.15 per million input tokens it is cheaper than 60% of comparable models.
Dark bar = input · light bar = output, scaled to the priciest peer.
1M tokens ≈ 8 full-length novels or ~2,500 pages of business documents in a single request.
Strongest on value. The pulled-in technical corner is the trade-off, and if the shape matters more than the price, this is your model.
Compare shapes side-by-side →Pricing
| Token Type | Cost per 1M tokens | Cost per 1K tokens |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.15 | $0.000150 |
| Output | $0.15 | $0.000150 |
What would Ministral 3 8B cost your business?
Pick the job that looks most like yours, then fine-tune with the sliders. Estimates update live.
A website chatbot handling around 100 customer conversations a day, a few short messages each.
Full calculator with 779 models → Price Calculator
These numbers get smaller with the right architecture.
We route routine calls to cheap models and save Ministral 3 8B for the hard ones. Most clients cut their estimate by 60-80%.
Talk to our teamFrequently asked questions about Ministral 3 8B
How much does Ministral 3 8B cost?
Ministral 3 8B costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens.
Is Ministral 3 8B good for coding?
On our coding benchmark index, Ministral 3 8B ranks #186 of 210 models, placing it in the broader range of the field for code generation and debugging.
Who created Ministral 3 8B?
Ministral 3 8B is developed by Mistral and was released on December 2, 2025.