Model comparison

Ministral 8B vs Phi-4

Phi-4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.2 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.

Ministral 8B Mistral AI

28.2

Rank #325 Confirmed

Phi-4 Microsoft

31.2

Rank #279 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 4 categories and Phi-4 in 5 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Phi-4 leads 32.6 to 12.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.9% for Ministral 8B and 64.9% for Phi-4.
  • Phi-4 is cheaper at $0.07 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.15 for Ministral 8B.
  • Ministral 8B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

Ministral 8B and Phi-4 specifications
Ministral 8BPhi-4
ProviderMistral AIMicrosoft
Noometry Index28.231.2
Released2024-10-012024-12-11
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window262K128K
Max output262K4K
Input $ / M tokens$0.15$0.07
Output $ / M tokens$0.15$0.14
Results tracked1737

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Category by category

Coding Too close to call

Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230), Phi-4: 34.4 (#239)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8BPhi-4
LMArena Coding12021231
BigCodeBench Instruct—45.5%
LiveBench Coding—30.7%
BigCodeBench Complete—55.4%

Agentic & Tool Use Phi-4 leads

Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148), Phi-4: 22.8 (#128)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8BPhi-4
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard11.1%28.8%
BALROG—11.6%

Reasoning Too close to call

Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281), Phi-4: 17.7 (#291)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8BPhi-4
LMArena Hard Prompts11911220
Chess Puzzles—1%
LiveBench Reasoning—47.8%
DTBench45.7%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—45.2%
Epoch Capabilities Index—130.42
LiveBench—41.6%

Math Ministral 8B leads

Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267), Phi-4: 20.8 (#285)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8BPhi-4
LMArena Math11881246
MATH Level 514.9%64.9%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—13.8%
LiveBench Math—42%

Knowledge Phi-4 leads

Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297), Phi-4: 32.6 (#209)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8BPhi-4
GPQA Diamond27.1%56.1%
Vectara Hallucination Rate7.4%3.7%
LMArena Expert11701203
Confabulations—29.4%
MMLU—84.8%

Multilingual Phi-4 leads

Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247), Phi-4: 37.2 (#237)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8BPhi-4
LMArena Non-English11651197
LMArena Chinese11931212
LMArena Russian11951209
LMArena French—1224
LMArena German—1222
LMArena Japanese—1158
LMArena Korean—1151
LMArena Spanish—1234

Instruction Following Too close to call

Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250), Phi-4: 60.4 (#251)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8BPhi-4
LMArena Instruction Following11611201
LiveBench Instruction Following—58.4%

Long Context Too close to call

Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227), Phi-4: 36.9 (#226)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8BPhi-4
LMArena Longer Query12121217

Writing & Preference Too close to call

Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246), Phi-4: 40.5 (#244)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkMinistral 8BPhi-4
LMArena Text11911217
LMArena Creative Writing11751182
LMArena Multi-Turn11661206
Short-Story Creative Writing—62.6%
LiveBench Language—25.6%

Frequently asked questions

Is Ministral 8B better than Phi-4?

Phi-4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.2 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Phi-4?

Phi-4 is cheaper. It lists at $0.07 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; Ministral 8B lists at $0.15 and $0.15.

Is Ministral 8B or Phi-4 better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (35.0 vs 34.4); test both on your own repository before choosing.

Which has the bigger context window?

Ministral 8B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Phi-4 share?

16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Phi-4 has 37.

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