Ministral 3 3B
The smallest of the Ministral 3 family, a 3B dense model with a vision encoder under Apache 2.0, sized for edge and local deployment in base, instruct and reasoning variants.
- Params
- 3.8B
- Context
- 256K tokens
- Released
- License
- Apache 2.0
Hosted API price
List price via Mistral · per 1M tokens
- Input
- $0.10 /1M
- Output
- $0.10 /1M
- Hosted by
-
1 provider
Hosted API pricing
How we price
Order
Providers are listed cheapest input rate first, then by output rate, a tie going to the creator's own listing. A provider that lists the model without a published rate sits at the end.
Prices
Base-tier, on-demand rates in USD per 1M tokens, converted at ECB reference rates where a provider publishes in another currency. Cached-input and batch rates show only where a provider publishes them. "Cheapest" marks the one provider with the lowest input and output pair; a tie wears no badge.
Cost
Input rate times the input tokens plus output rate times the output tokens, at the monthly volume set above the table. Cached-input, batch, long-context and reasoning-token billing are not modelled.
Transparency and funding
- Affiliates: Affiliate links are marked. We may earn a commission if you click them, but commissions never affect the order.
Every provider serving Ministral 3 3B, cheapest input first. Set your monthly volume to see what each would bill.
| Provider | Input /1M | Output /1M | Cost at 10M in + 2M out | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
$0.10 | $0.10 | $1.20 | Visit website |
Heads up: Base-tier, on-demand rates per 1M tokens; cached, batch and long-context tiers excluded. A provider may serve a shorter context or a quantized build than the creator's release. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.
Estimated cost to self-host
Ministral 3 3B needs about 8 GB of GPU memory at 4-bit with 32K context. The cheapest rental that fits is 1× RTX 3060 at about $50 a month.
That costs the same as roughly 504M tokens a month on Mistral's API. Self-hosting is more expensive below that volume.
| Precision | Memory | Cheapest fit (32K context) | Cost /mo | Break-even vs API |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4-bit INT4 / FP4 | 8 GB |
|
$50 | 504M tokens /mo |
| 8-bit FP8 / INT8 | 9 GB |
|
$50 | 504M tokens /mo |
| 16-bit FP16 / BF16 | 13 GB |
|
$86 | 864M tokens /mo |
Estimates based on median on-demand rates for Nvidia GPUs. Memory is weights plus KV cache for one request, using FP8 KV cache where supported and FP16/BF16 otherwise. Break-even assumes a 5:1 input-to-output ratio. No guarantee of runtime support, usable performance, or that a matching quantized build exists. How we estimate costs.
Similarly priced models
The models nearest Ministral 3 3B by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.
| Model | Blended /1M | Input /1M | Output /1M | Context | Cutoff | vs Ministral 3 3B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
$0.075 | $0.05 | $0.20 | 262K | Jun 2025 | −25% |
|
|
$0.0833 | $0.05 | $0.25 | 8K | Mar 2023 | −17% |
|
|
$0.0917 | $0.06 | $0.25 | 262K | −8% | |
|
|
$0.0983 | $0.05 | $0.34 | 128K | Dec 2023 | −2% |
|
|
$0.0983 | $0.05 | $0.34 | 33K | −2% | |
|
|
$0.10 | $0.10 | $0.10 | 256K | ||
|
|
$0.1083 | $0.08 | $0.25 | 1M | +8% | |
|
|
$0.1083 | $0.05 | $0.40 | 400K | May 2024 | +8% |
|
|
$0.1267 | $0.06 | $0.46 | 262K | +27% | |
|
|
$0.1283 | $0.07 | $0.42 | 262K | +28% | |
|
|
$0.1333 | $0.10 | $0.30 | 128K | Aug 2024 | +33% |
USD per 1M tokens at each model's cheapest listed provider. Blended is the cost of 10M input plus 2M output tokens, spread over the 12M.
Capabilities
What Ministral 3 3B accepts and can do, as published by Mistral.
- Text Accepts and generates natural-language text.
- Image Accepts images as input alongside text.
- Function calling Connect to external tools, APIs, and systems.
- Structured output Return responses in structured formats like JSON.
- File upload Process uploaded documents, spreadsheets, and other files.
Common questions
What is Ministral 3 3B good for?
Edge and on-device deployment with vision. Apache 2.0 weights at the light end of the Ministral 3 family, and at the lower-cost end of Mistral's lineup when hosted.
When is Ministral 3 3B not a good fit?
Audio or video input, and any task where 3B parameters is too small: the 8B and 14B Ministral 3 variants sit above it. No maximum output length is published.
What is the cheapest way to run Ministral 3 3B?
Hosted, unless you push serious volume. Mistral charges $0.10 in / $0.10 out per 1M tokens. The cheapest rental that fits is 1x RTX 3060 at $50 a month, which costs the same as about 504M tokens a month on that API.
Can I self-host Ministral 3 3B?
Yes. The weights are Apache 2.0 licensed. At 4-bit it needs about 8 GB of GPU memory, which starts at roughly $50 a month on the cheapest rental that fits.
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