Claude 3 Sonnet vs Ministral 8B Instruct Comparison

Comparing Claude 3 Sonnet and Ministral 8B Instruct across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

Performance Benchmarks

Comparative analysis across standard metrics

4 benchmarks

Claude 3 Sonnet outperforms in 3 benchmarks (ARC-C, HumanEval, MMLU), while Ministral 8B Instruct is better at 1 benchmark (MATH).

Claude 3 Sonnet shows notably better performance in the majority of benchmarks.

Wed Mar 18 2026 • llm-stats.com

Arena Performance

Human preference votes

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

Ministral 8B Instruct costs less

For input processing, Claude 3 Sonnet ($3.00/1M tokens) is 30.0x more expensive than Ministral 8B Instruct ($0.10/1M tokens).

For output processing, Claude 3 Sonnet ($15.00/1M tokens) is 150.0x more expensive than Ministral 8B Instruct ($0.10/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Claude 3 Sonnet is more expensive than Ministral 8B Instruct.*

* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens

Lowest available price from all providers
Wed Mar 18 2026 • llm-stats.com
Anthropic
Claude 3 Sonnet
Input tokens$3.00
Output tokens$15.00
Best providerAnthropic
Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
Input tokens$0.10
Output tokens$0.10
Best providerMistral
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Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Claude 3 Sonnet accepts 200,000 input tokens compared to Ministral 8B Instruct's 128,000 tokens. Claude 3 Sonnet can generate longer responses up to 200,000 tokens, while Ministral 8B Instruct is limited to 128,000 tokens.

Anthropic
Claude 3 Sonnet
Input200,000 tokens
Output200,000 tokens
Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
Input128,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Wed Mar 18 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input Capabilities

Supported data types and modalities

Claude 3 Sonnet supports multimodal inputs, whereas Ministral 8B Instruct does not.

Claude 3 Sonnet can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Claude 3 Sonnet

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Ministral 8B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Claude 3 Sonnet is licensed under a proprietary license, while Ministral 8B Instruct uses Mistral Research License.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Claude 3 Sonnet

Proprietary

Closed source

Ministral 8B Instruct

Mistral Research License

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Claude 3 Sonnet was released on 2024-02-29, while Ministral 8B Instruct was released on 2024-10-16.

Ministral 8B Instruct is 8 months newer than Claude 3 Sonnet.

Claude 3 Sonnet

Feb 29, 2024

2.0 years ago

Ministral 8B Instruct

Oct 16, 2024

1.4 years ago

7mo newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Provider Availability

Claude 3 Sonnet is available from Anthropic, Bedrock, Google. Ministral 8B Instruct is available from Mistral AI. The availability of providers can affect quality of the model and reliability.

Claude 3 Sonnet

anthropic logo
Anthropic
Input Price:Input: $3.00/1MOutput Price:Output: $15.00/1M
bedrock logo
AWS Bedrock
Input Price:Input: $3.00/1MOutput Price:Output: $15.00/1M
google logo
Google
Input Price:Input: $3.00/1MOutput Price:Output: $15.00/1M

Ministral 8B Instruct

mistral logo
Mistral
Input Price:Input: $0.10/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.10/1M
* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

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Key Takeaways

Larger context window (200,000 tokens)
Supports multimodal inputs
Higher ARC-C score (93.2% vs 71.9%)
Higher HumanEval score (73.0% vs 34.8%)
Higher MMLU score (79.0% vs 65.0%)
Less expensive input tokens
Less expensive output tokens
Has open weights
Higher MATH score (54.5% vs 43.1%)

Detailed Comparison

AI Model Comparison Table
Feature
Anthropic
Claude 3 Sonnet
Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct