Model comparison

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

Mistral Medium 3.5 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.2 vs 40.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 16 shared benchmarks.

Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral AI

40.2

Rank #152 Confirmed

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

NVIDIA

40.0

Rank #155 Confirmed

Summary

They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher in 6 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 2 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Medium 3.5 leads 58.5 to 48.5.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5.

Side by side

Mistral Medium 3.5 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning specifications
	Mistral Medium 3.5	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Provider	Mistral AI	NVIDIA
Noometry Index	40.2	40.0
Released	—	2026-08-11
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	262K	262K
Max output	210K	262K
Input $ / M tokens	$1.50	$0.05
Output $ / M tokens	$7.50	$0.20
Results tracked	22	18

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Category by category

Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.0 (#213), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Coding	1461	1375
LMArena WebDev	1264	—

Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 17.3 (#295), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Hard Prompts	1436	1337
Kagi LLM Benchmark	41.4%	—
NYT Connections (extended)	12.9%	—
Epoch Capabilities Index	141.35	—

Math Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.1 (#113), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Math	1431	1359

Knowledge Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 40.0 (#126), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Expert	1432	1356

Multimodal Not comparable

Mistral Medium 3.5: 38.3 (#65), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Vision	1223	—

Multilingual Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 51.9 (#100), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Non-English	1404	1295
LMArena Chinese	1442	1359
LMArena French	1448	1366
LMArena German	1451	1282
LMArena Korean	1385	1238
LMArena Russian	1395	1253
LMArena Spanish	1409	1345
LMArena Japanese	—	1206

Instruction Following Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.6 (#90), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Instruction Following	1415	1318

Long Context Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#103), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Longer Query	1415	1314

Writing & Preference Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.5 (#117), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Text	1421	1327
LMArena Creative Writing	1374	1254
LMArena Multi-Turn	1423	1328
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	—	1280
EQ-Bench 4	993	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Mistral Medium 3.5 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.2 vs 40.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 262K tokens.

How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium 3.5 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?

16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.