Model comparison
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 34.4 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.
NVIDIASummary
- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores higher in 1 category and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 7 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 34.7 to 18.0.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 34.4 | 39.3 |
| Released | 2024-06-20 | 2026-08-11 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | — | 262K |
| Max output | — | 262K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.06 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $0.16 |
| Results tracked | 60 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 39.5 (#145), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1343 | 1370 |
| Aider Polyglot | 51.6% | — |
| GSO | 4.6% | — |
| WeirdML | 40% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 46.8% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 67.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 58.6% | — |
| CadEval | 48% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 81.7% | — |
| MBPP+ | 74.3% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 32.1 (#61), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | 24% | — |
| Cybench | 17.5% | — |
| BALROG | 32.6% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 45.2% | — |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 22.5 (#176), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1305 | 1335 |
| SimpleBench | 41.4% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 0.9% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 56.7% | — |
| DTBench | 67.8% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 55% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.55 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60.7 | — |
| LiveBench | 59% | — |
Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 18.0 (#282), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1306 | 1355 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 8.5% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 27.6% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 52.3% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 56.9% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 2.1% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |
Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 28.5 (#236), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1264 | 1354 |
| GPQA Diamond | 55.3% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 4.1% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 77.7% | — |
| Confabulations | 19.9% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 56.5% | — |
| MMLU | 87.3% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 26.0 (#115), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1125 | — |
| Video-MME | 60% | — |
| GeoBench | 62% | — |
| VPCT | 33% | — |
Multilingual Too close to call
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 43.4 (#180), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1283 | 1292 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1271 | 1356 |
| LMArena French | 1304 | 1369 |
| LMArena German | 1297 | 1280 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1234 | 1213 |
| LMArena Korean | 1200 | 1233 |
| LMArena Russian | 1305 | 1257 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1289 | 1321 |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 69.0 (#177), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1297 | 1317 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 69.3% | — |
| IFEval | 85.5% | — |
Long Context Too close to call
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 39.9 (#162), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1311 | 1312 |
Writing & Preference Claude 3.5 Sonnet leads
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 53.0 (#159), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1298 | 1324 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1292 | 1254 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1451 | 1280 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1326 | 1327 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 80.3% | — |
| WildBench | 79.2% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 53.8% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 34.4 on the Noometry Index.
Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (39.5 vs 39.6); test both on your own repository before choosing.
How many benchmarks do Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?
18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 60 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.