Model comparison
Mistral Medium vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 36.0 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
NVIDIASummary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Medium scores higher in 4 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 4 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 36.9 to 24.9.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium.
Side by side
| Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 36.0 | 39.3 |
| Released | 2023-12-11 | 2026-08-11 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 262K | 262K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $0.06 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $7.50 | $0.16 |
| Results tracked | 36 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mistral Medium: 33.8 (#241), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1434 | 1370 |
| FrontierCode | 8% | — |
| SciCode | 40.2% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.7% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 763.98 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Medium: 28.1 (#84), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.7% | — |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mistral Medium: 23.3 (#165), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1426 | 1335 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 50% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| DTBench | 75.5% | — |
| LMCA | 26.1% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 26.9% | — |
Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mistral Medium: 27.2 (#238), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1409 | 1355 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 32.2% | — |
| ProofBench | 9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 81.6% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 0.3% | — |
Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mistral Medium: 24.9 (#260), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1408 | 1354 |
| GPQA Diamond | 59.5% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 4.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 22.7% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Medium: 34.6 (#82), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1172 | — |
Multilingual Mistral Medium leads
Mistral Medium: 52.3 (#86), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1408 | 1292 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1448 | 1356 |
| LMArena French | 1460 | 1369 |
| LMArena German | 1433 | 1280 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1378 | 1213 |
| LMArena Korean | 1382 | 1233 |
| LMArena Russian | 1411 | 1257 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1433 | 1321 |
Instruction Following Mistral Medium leads
Mistral Medium: 73.9 (#111), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1398 | 1317 |
Long Context Mistral Medium leads
Mistral Medium: 42.9 (#108), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1406 | 1312 |
Writing & Preference Mistral Medium leads
Mistral Medium: 60.2 (#97), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1424 | 1324 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1391 | 1254 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1418 | 1327 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77.3% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1280 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Medium better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 36.0 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is Mistral Medium or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.6 versus 33.8 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Medium has 36 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.