Verdict
Built from the measurements below
- Accuracy is too close to call: LongCat 2.0 scored 48.8% 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 12× cheaper per question as billed ($0.00027 vs $0.0032), reasoning tokens included.
- Ministral 3 8B 2512 generates text 1.9× faster: 124 tokens per second against 67.
- Ministral 3 8B 2512 starts answering sooner: 0.3 s to the first token, against 1.4 s for LongCat 2.0.
- LongCat 2.0 accepts more context: 1M tokens against 262k.
Which should you choose?
Choose LongCat 2.0 for a 1M-token context window. Choose Ministral 3 8B 2512 for the lower cost per correct answer ($0.00063 against $0.0066), faster streaming, a quicker first token and shorter outputs (about 1,496 tokens per question against 2,600). The widest subject gap is in science: LongCat 2.0 answered 18 of 30 correctly, Ministral 3 8B 2512 10 of 30. With so few questions per subject, treat this as a lead to test on your own prompts, not a result.
Accuracy gap +6.3 points (z = 0.79). We call a winner only when z is at least 1.96, the usual 95% threshold. Speed, latency and price need a 10% margin.