Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct are closely matched at 2.2 and 12.1 on the LLM Stats Score.
Mistral AI · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 2.2 and 12.1.
In the 2 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 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 Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512)
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Dec 2025
Choose Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
- you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 2 of 2 exact shared results
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Individual benchmarks
4 reported for Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) · 14 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is better at 2 benchmarks (Arena Hard, MATH).
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 69.7B more parameters than Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512), making it 2323.3% larger.
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct specifies input context (131,072 tokens). Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct specifies output context (8,192 tokens).
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) supports multimodal inputs, whereas Qwen2.5 72B Instruct does not.
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512)
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
License
Usage and distribution terms
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) is licensed under Apache 2.0, while Qwen2.5 72B Instruct uses Qwen.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Apache 2.0
Open weights
Qwen
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) was released on 2025-12-04, while Qwen2.5 72B Instruct was released on 2024-09-19.
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) is 15 months newer than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
Dec 4, 2025
10 months ago
1.2yr newerSep 19, 2024
2.0 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.