Ministral 8B Instruct vs Qwen2.5 32B Instruct vs Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct

It is close. Our weighted score puts them within a point (Ministral 8B Instruct 42/100, Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct 42/100, Qwen2.5 32B Instruct 41/100), so choose by what matters most for your work: Qwen2.5 32B Instruct for raw capability and Ministral 8B Instruct on price. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%. Capability uses the average of shared benchmarks (GPQA Diamond), because Ministral 8B Instruct has no Capabilities Index score yet.

Ministral 8B Instruct is cheaper at $0.15 input / $0.15 output per million tokens (median across 1 API provider). Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct costs $0.152 input / $0.167 output per million tokens (median across 9 API providers); Qwen2.5 32B Instruct costs $0.70 input / $2.80 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.15 per million tokens for Ministral 8B Instruct versus $0.156 for Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct (1× as much) and $1.23 for Qwen2.5 32B Instruct (8.2× as much).

Not every model here has a Capabilities Index score, so we compare the average of shared benchmarks (GPQA Diamond): Qwen2.5 32B Instruct 46.1%, Ministral 8B Instruct 27.2% and Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct 27.0%. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — Qwen2.5 32B Instruct 46.1%, Ministral 8B Instruct 27.2%, Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct 27.0%.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Ministral 8B Instruct, Qwen2.5 32B Instruct and Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Qwen2.5 32B Instruct leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

Ministral 8B Instruct and Qwen2.5 32B Instruct have the largest context windows (131,072 and 131,072 tokens), against 128,000 for Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct. Maximum output per response: Ministral 8B Instruct up to 8,192, Qwen2.5 32B Instruct up to 8,192, Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct up to 4,096 tokens.

Ministral 8B Instruct accepts text; Qwen2.5 32B Instruct accepts text; Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct accepts text. They handle the same number of input types.

Yes, all three publish their weights (Mistral Research License), so you can self-host them.

Ministral 8B Instruct is the newest, released Oct 16, 2024. Qwen2.5 32B Instruct came out Sep 17, 2024; Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct came out Jul 23, 2024. Knowledge cutoff: Qwen2.5 32B Instruct Apr 2024, Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct Dec 2023.

Each model gets a 0–100 score on capability (50%, independent benchmark results); price (25%, blended price per million tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scale); inputs & features (15%, image, PDF, audio and video input, tool calling, structured output and reasoning); context window (10%, maximum tokens per request, log scale). Dimensions missing for any model are dropped and the remaining weights rescaled, so every model is judged on the same evidence. Specs and prices come from public model listings and the labs’ own API pages; capability scores come from independent benchmark runs. Data updated Oct 4, 2026.