Verdict
Built from the measurements below
- Accuracy is too close to call: Ministral 3 3B 2512 scored 26.2% and Nova Micro 1.0 22.5% on the same 80 questions, a gap within what chance alone could produce.
- Nova Micro 1.0 is 2.2× cheaper per question as billed ($0.000087 vs $0.00019), reasoning tokens included.
- Ministral 3 3B 2512 generates text 1.4× faster: 252 tokens per second against 180.
- Ministral 3 3B 2512 starts answering sooner: 0.3 s to the first token, against 0.5 s for Nova Micro 1.0.
Which should you choose?
Choose Ministral 3 3B 2512 for faster streaming, a quicker first token and open weights you can run yourself. Choose Nova Micro 1.0 for the lower cost per correct answer ($0.00039 against $0.00074) and shorter outputs (about 545 tokens per question against 1,652). The widest subject gap is in economics: Nova Micro 1.0 answered 6 of 9 correctly, Ministral 3 3B 2512 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 +3.8 points (z = 0.55). We call a winner only when z is at least 1.96, the usual 95% threshold. Speed, latency and price need a 10% margin.