The closest alternative to Ministral 3 3B 2512 is Jamba Large 1.7 — comparable intelligence (10.9 vs 11.2); for a cheaper option, Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) runs Free/M vs $0.100/M; for more speed, Mercury 2 hits 590 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Jamba Large 1.7 is the closest alternative to Ministral 3 3B 2512, with an Intelligence Index of 10.9 (Ministral 3 3B 2512 scores 11.2) at $2.00 per million input tokens.
Yes — Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) costs Free per million input tokens versus $0.100 for Ministral 3 3B 2512, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Ministral 3 3B 2512 — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.