Verdict
Built from the measurements below
- Accuracy is too close to call: Granite 4.0 Micro scored 25.0% and Ministral 3 3B 2512 26.2% on the same 80 questions, a gap within what chance alone could produce.
- Granite 4.0 Micro is 3.8× cheaper per question as billed ($0.000051 vs $0.00019), reasoning tokens included.
- Ministral 3 3B 2512 generates text 6.6× faster: 252 tokens per second against 38.
- Ministral 3 3B 2512 starts answering sooner: 0.3 s to the first token, against 0.7 s for Granite 4.0 Micro.
Which should you choose?
Choose Granite 4.0 Micro for the lower cost per correct answer ($0.0002 against $0.00074) and shorter outputs (about 403 tokens per question against 1,652). Choose Ministral 3 3B 2512 for faster streaming and a quicker first token. The widest subject gap is in economics: Ministral 3 3B 2512 answered 4 of 9 correctly, Granite 4.0 Micro 2 of 9. With so few questions per subject, treat this as a lead to test on your own prompts, not a result.
Accuracy gap -1.3 points (z = -0.18). We call a winner only when z is at least 1.96, the usual 95% threshold. Speed, latency and price need a 10% margin.