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Hermes 3 405B vs Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)

Hermes 3 405B and Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) are closely matched at 4.3 and -1.1 on the LLM Stats Score.

Nous Research · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Hermes 3 405B and Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 4.3 and -1.1.

In the 2 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Hermes 3 405B wins 2; 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 Hermes 3 405B

  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 2 of 2 exact shared results

Choose Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)

  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Dec 2025

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Hermes 3 405B
Nous Research
Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)
Mistral AI
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
4.3
#309
-1.1
#341
Reasoning
3.7
#307
-1.2
#335
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
2 of 2
0 of 2
Input price
$1.00 / M
— / M
Output price
$1.00 / M
— / M
Context window
131,072
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

2 shared
Index
Hermes 3 405B
Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)
Math
6.7#270
4.2#287
Legal
8.7#139
4.2#165
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

13 reported for Hermes 3 405B · 6 for Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)

2 shared

Hermes 3 405B outperforms in 2 benchmarks (AGIEval, MMLU), while Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) is better at 0 benchmarks.

Hermes 3 405B significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Thu Oct 01 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

397.0B diff

Hermes 3 405B has 397.0B more parameters than Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512), making it 4962.5% larger.

Nous Research
Hermes 3 405B
405.0Bparameters
Mistral AI
Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)
8.0Bparameters
405.0B
Hermes 3 405B
8.0B
Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Hermes 3 405B specifies input context (131,072 tokens). Only Hermes 3 405B specifies output context (131,072 tokens).

Nous Research
Hermes 3 405B
Input131,072 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Mistral AI
Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Thu Oct 01 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) supports multimodal inputs, whereas Hermes 3 405B does not.

Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Hermes 3 405B

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Both models are licensed under Apache 2.0.

Both models share the same licensing terms, providing consistent usage rights.

Hermes 3 405B

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Hermes 3 405B was released on 2024-10-09, while Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) was released on 2025-12-04.

Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) is 14 months newer than Hermes 3 405B.

Hermes 3 405B

Oct 9, 2024

2.0 years ago

Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)

Dec 4, 2025

10 months ago

1.2yr 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

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Hermes 3 405B and Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Hermes 3 405B
✓ Preferred
Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Hermes 3 405B vs Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512).

Which is better, Hermes 3 405B or Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)?

Hermes 3 405B and Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) are closely matched on the LLM Stats Score at 4.3 and -1.1. Hermes 3 405B is made by Nous Research and Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) 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 Hermes 3 405B compare to Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) in benchmarks?

Hermes 3 405B scores HellaSwag: 90.2%, MT-Bench: 89.3%, BoolQ: 88.9%, Winogrande: 86.3%, ARC-E: 86.2%. Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) scores MMLU-Redux: 79.3%, MMLU: 76.1%, Multilingual MMLU: 70.6%, TriviaQA: 68.1%, MATH (CoT): 62.6%.

What are the context window sizes for Hermes 3 405B and Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)?

Hermes 3 405B supports 131K tokens and Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Hermes 3 405B and Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (4.3 vs -1.1), multimodal support (no vs yes). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Hermes 3 405B and Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512)?

Hermes 3 405B is developed by Nous Research and Ministral 3 (8B Base 2512) is developed by Mistral AI.

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