Model comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs o3
o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.4 to 39.3 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 41× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.
NVIDIASummary
- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher in 0 categories and o3 in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where o3 leads 54.5 to 36.9.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $8 for o3.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 200K.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 39.3 | 47.4 |
| Released | 2026-08-11 | 2025-04-16 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 200K |
| Max output | 262K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.06 | $2 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.16 | $8 |
| Results tracked | 18 | 63 |
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Category by category
Coding o3 leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143), o3: 47.3 (#57)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1370 | 1408 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 62.3% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 58.4% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 81.3% |
| GSO | — | 8.8% |
| WeirdML | — | 52.4% |
| CadEval | — | 74% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 933.55 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —, o3: 34.3 (#42)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 63% |
| GDPval | — | 30.8% |
| DeepResearch Bench | — | 45.2% |
| OSWorld | — | 23% |
| LMArena Search | — | 1144 |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 65.4% |
Reasoning o3 leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128), o3: 32.1 (#66)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | 1402 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 6.5% |
| SimpleBench | — | 53.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 67.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 60.8% |
| CritPt | — | 1.4% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 38% |
| EnigmaEval | — | 13.1% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 29% |
| DTBench | — | 84.8% |
| LMCA | — | 39.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 146.88 |
| ForecastBench | — | 62.5 |
Math o3 leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156), o3: 48.9 (#49)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1355 | 1426 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 33.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 84.4% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 71.4% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.8% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 18.7% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 2.1% |
Knowledge o3 leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154), o3: 54.5 (#47)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1354 | 1403 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 81.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 20.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 49.4% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 85.9% |
| Confabulations | — | 14.4% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 75.3% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —, o3: 40.7 (#35)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1214 |
| GeoBench | — | 74% |
| VPCT | — | 52% |
Multilingual o3 leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175), o3: 51.9 (#99)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1292 | 1402 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1356 | 1438 |
| LMArena French | 1369 | 1430 |
| LMArena German | 1280 | 1420 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1213 | 1404 |
| LMArena Korean | 1233 | 1371 |
| LMArena Russian | 1257 | 1407 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1321 | 1395 |
Instruction Following o3 leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166), o3: 73.0 (#122)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1317 | 1368 |
| IFEval | — | 86.9% |
Long Context o3 leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160), o3: 53.2 (#6)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1312 | 1372 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 88.9% |
| CL-bench | — | 17.8% |
Writing & Preference o3 leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198), o3: 63.7 (#62)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1324 | 1410 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | 1359 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | 1676 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1327 | 1405 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 83.9% |
| WildBench | — | 86.1% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than o3?
o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.4 to 39.3 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 41× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or o3?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; o3 lists at $2 and $8.
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or o3 better for coding?
o3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.3 versus 39.6 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and o3 share?
18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and o3 has 63.