Devstral 2 2512 vs Ministral 3 3B 2512

Head-to-head across our 12-test suite: Devstral 2 2512 wins 6 categories — structured_output (5 vs 4), strategic_analysis (4 vs 2), creative_problem_solving (4 vs 3), long_context (5 vs 4), agentic_planning (4 vs 3), and multilingual (5 vs 4). In our rankings those map to meaningful placements: Devstral’s structured_output is tied for 1st (tied with 24 others out of 54), long_context is tied for 1st (tied with 36 others out of 55), and agentic_planning ranks 16 of 54 (tied with 25), signalling stronger goal decomposition and long-context retrieval for large-context or agentic coding tasks. Ministral 3 3B 2512 wins 2 categories: faithfulness (5 vs 4) and classification (4 vs 3). Faithfulness for Ministral is tied for 1st (tied with 32 others out of 55), and classification is tied for 1st (tied with 29 others out of 53), indicating it is more conservative on source fidelity and routing/class tasks. Four categories tie: constrained_rewriting (5 each), tool_calling (4 each), safety_calibration (1 each), and persona_consistency (4 each). Tool_calling ties map to identical rank (rank 18 of 54), so both models handle function selection and sequencing similarly in our tests. Practical interpretation: choose Devstral when you need superior long-context retrieval, structured JSON/schema outputs, agentic planning and multilingual quality; choose Ministral when faithfulness, classification, or cost (and image-to-text input capability) are higher priorities.

Per-mTok rates: Devstral 2 2512 charges $0.40 input and $2.00 output; Ministral 3 3B 2512 charges $0.10 input and $0.10 output. Using a 50/50 input/output token split: at 1M tokens/month Devstral ≈ $1,200 vs Ministral ≈ $100; at 10M tokens Devstral ≈ $12,000 vs Ministral ≈ $1,000; at 100M tokens Devstral ≈ $120,000 vs Ministral ≈ $10,000. The payload also lists priceRatio 20, reflecting the 20× gap on output cost (2.00 vs 0.10). Teams at scale (10M+ tokens/mo) or with cost-sensitive production inference should prefer Ministral 3 3B 2512; teams that need Devstral’s higher-quality structured outputs and long-context reasoning may accept the higher bill.

Choose Devstral 2 2512 if you need high-quality agentic coding, reliable long-context retrieval (262,144 token window), strong structured_output (5/5, tied for 1st), and multilingual performance and you can absorb higher inference cost. Choose Ministral 3 3B 2512 if you need a budget model with vision input (text+image->text), top-tier faithfulness and classification (both tied for 1st in our tests), and much lower per-mTok costs ($0.10 input/output vs Devstral’s $2.00 output).