The closest alternative to Ministral 3 8B 2512 is Mistral Medium 3.5 — comparable intelligence (29.9 vs —); for a cheaper option, GPT-5.6 Luna runs $0.100/M vs $0.150/M; and the best open-weight substitute is Kimi K3.
Mistral Medium 3.5 is the closest alternative to Ministral 3 8B 2512, with an Intelligence Index of 29.9 (Ministral 3 8B 2512 scores —) at $1.50 per million input tokens.
Yes — GPT-5.6 Luna costs $0.100 per million input tokens versus $0.150 for Ministral 3 8B 2512, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
Kimi K3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Ministral 3 8B 2512 — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 57.1 on intelligence.