Verdict
Built from the measurements below
- Accuracy is too close to call: Llama 4 Scout scored 41.2% and Ministral 3 8B 2512 42.5% on the same 80 questions, a gap within what chance alone could produce.
- Ministral 3 8B 2512 is 1.4× cheaper per question as billed ($0.00027 vs $0.00037), reasoning tokens included.
- Ministral 3 8B 2512 generates text 8.1× faster: 124 tokens per second against 15.
- Ministral 3 8B 2512 starts answering sooner: 0.3 s to the first token, against 1.2 s for Llama 4 Scout.
- Llama 4 Scout accepts more context: 1.3M tokens against 262k.
Which should you choose?
Choose Llama 4 Scout for shorter outputs (about 723 tokens per question against 1,496) and a 1.3M-token context window. Choose Ministral 3 8B 2512 for the lower cost per correct answer ($0.00063 against $0.0009), faster streaming and a quicker first token. The widest subject gap is in economics: Ministral 3 8B 2512 answered 7 of 9 correctly, Llama 4 Scout 4 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 = -0.16). We call a winner only when z is at least 1.96, the usual 95% threshold. Speed, latency and price need a 10% margin.