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Granite 3.3 8B Base vs Ministral 8B Instruct

Granite 3.3 8B Base and Ministral 8B Instruct are closely matched at -0.3 and -4.5 on the LLM Stats Score.

IBM · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Granite 3.3 8B Base and Ministral 8B Instruct are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at -0.3 and -4.5.

In the 7 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Ministral 8B Instruct wins 4; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Granite 3.3 8B Base

  • your work emphasizes coding — it leads those capability indexes
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Apr 2025

Choose Ministral 8B Instruct

  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 4 of 7 exact shared results

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Granite 3.3 8B Base
IBM
Ministral 8B Instruct
Mistral AI
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
-0.3
#317
-4.5
#339
Reasoning
-0.5
#311
-4.6
#330
Coding
11.2
#152
-14.4
#258
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
3 of 7
4 of 7
Input price
— / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
— / M
$0.10 / M
Context window
—
128,000

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

2 shared
Index
Granite 3.3 8B Base
Ministral 8B Instruct
Math
-0.5#290
-3.7#307
Legal
-5.5#192
-7.6#195
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

20 reported for Granite 3.3 8B Base · 11 for Ministral 8B Instruct

7 shared

Granite 3.3 8B Base outperforms in 3 benchmarks (AGIEval, HumanEval, TriviaQA), while Ministral 8B Instruct is better at 4 benchmarks (ARC-C, Arena Hard, MMLU, Winogrande).

Ministral 8B Instruct has a slight edge in benchmark performance.

Sun Sep 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

150.2M diff

Granite 3.3 8B Base has 0.2B more parameters than Ministral 8B Instruct, making it 1.9% larger.

IBM
Granite 3.3 8B Base
8.2Bparameters
Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
8.0Bparameters
8.2B
Granite 3.3 8B Base
8.0B
Ministral 8B Instruct

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Ministral 8B Instruct specifies input context (128,000 tokens). Only Ministral 8B Instruct specifies output context (128,000 tokens).

IBM
Granite 3.3 8B Base
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
Input128,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Sun Sep 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Granite 3.3 8B Base supports multimodal inputs, whereas Ministral 8B Instruct does not.

Granite 3.3 8B Base can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Granite 3.3 8B Base

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Ministral 8B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Granite 3.3 8B Base is licensed under Apache 2.0, while Ministral 8B Instruct uses Mistral Research License.

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

Granite 3.3 8B Base

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Ministral 8B Instruct

Mistral Research License

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Granite 3.3 8B Base was released on 2025-04-16, while Ministral 8B Instruct was released on 2024-10-16.

Granite 3.3 8B Base is 6 months newer than Ministral 8B Instruct.

Granite 3.3 8B Base

Apr 16, 2025

1.4 years ago

6mo newer
Ministral 8B Instruct

Oct 16, 2024

1.9 years ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Granite 3.3 8B Base has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2024-04-01, while Ministral 8B Instruct's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Granite 3.3 8B Base's training data extends to 2024-04-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without Ministral 8B Instruct's cutoff date.

Granite 3.3 8B Base

Apr 2024

Ministral 8B Instruct

—

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Granite 3.3 8B Base and Ministral 8B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Granite 3.3 8B Base
✓ Preferred
Ministral 8B Instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Granite 3.3 8B Base vs Ministral 8B Instruct.

Which is better, Granite 3.3 8B Base or Ministral 8B Instruct?

Granite 3.3 8B Base and Ministral 8B Instruct are closely matched on the LLM Stats Score at -0.3 and -4.5. Granite 3.3 8B Base is made by IBM and Ministral 8B Instruct is made by Mistral AI. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Granite 3.3 8B Base compare to Ministral 8B Instruct in benchmarks?

Granite 3.3 8B Base scores HumanEval: 89.7%, AttaQ: 88.5%, HumanEval+: 86.1%, AIME 2024: 81.2%, HellaSwag: 80.1%. Ministral 8B Instruct scores MT-Bench: 83.0%, Winogrande: 75.3%, ARC-C: 71.9%, Arena Hard: 70.9%, MBPP pass@1: 70.0%.

What are the context window sizes for Granite 3.3 8B Base and Ministral 8B Instruct?

Granite 3.3 8B Base supports an unknown number of tokens and Ministral 8B Instruct supports 128K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Granite 3.3 8B Base and Ministral 8B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (-0.3 vs -4.5), multimodal support (yes vs no), licensing (Apache 2.0 vs Mistral Research License). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Granite 3.3 8B Base and Ministral 8B Instruct?

Granite 3.3 8B Base is developed by IBM and Ministral 8B Instruct is developed by Mistral AI.

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