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Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) vs Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking leads the LLM Stats Score 23.9 to 2.3.

Mistral AI · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking leads the overall LLM Stats Score 23.9 to 2.3, ranking #162 overall.

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 Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

  • overall performance matters — it scores 23.9 and ranks #162 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning — it leads those capability indexes

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512)
Mistral AI
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
2.3
#304
23.9
#162
Reasoning
2.8
#292
24.7
#144
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
— / M
$0.15 / M
Output price
— / M
$1.50 / M
Context window
—
65,536

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512)
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Writing
4.3#92
13.6#50
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

4 reported for Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) · 23 for Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

No common benchmarks found

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinkingdon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

77.0B diff

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking has 77.0B more parameters than Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512), making it 2566.7% larger.

Mistral AI
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512)
3.0Bparameters
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
80.0Bparameters
3.0B
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512)
80.0B
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking specifies input context (65,536 tokens). Only Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking specifies output context (65,536 tokens).

Mistral AI
Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512)
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Input65,536 tokens
Output65,536 tokens
Sun Sep 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) supports multimodal inputs, whereas Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking 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)

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

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.

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512)

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) was released on 2025-12-04, while Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking was released on 2025-09-10.

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) is 3 months newer than Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking.

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512)

Dec 4, 2025

9 months ago

2mo newer
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

Sep 10, 2025

12 months ago

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?Start an Issue discussion→

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512)
✓ Preferred
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) vs Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking.

Which is better, Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) or Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking leads the LLM Stats Score 23.9 to 2.3. Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) is made by Mistral AI and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is made by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) compare to Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking in benchmarks?

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) scores MATH: 83.0%, Wild Bench: 56.8%, Arena Hard: 30.5%, MM-MT-Bench: 7.8%. Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking scores MMLU-Redux: 92.5%, IFEval: 88.9%, AIME 2025: 87.8%, WritingBench: 84.6%, MMLU-Pro: 82.7%.

What are the context window sizes for Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) supports an unknown number of tokens and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking supports 66K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (2.3 vs 23.9), multimodal support (yes vs no). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?

Ministral 3 (3B Instruct 2512) is developed by Mistral AI and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

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