Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 40.0 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 114× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic

58.2

Rank #20 Confirmed

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning NVIDIA

40.0

Rank #155 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 57.8 to 26.8.
  • Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.
  • Claude Opus 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
ProviderAnthropicNVIDIA
Noometry Index58.240.0
Released2026-02-042026-08-11
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M262K
Max output128K262K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.05
Output $ / M tokens$25$0.20
Results tracked6818

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Coding15361375
SWE-bench Verified78.7%—
FrontierCode26.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.6%—
LMArena WebDev1547—
SWE-bench Multilingual72%—
GSO41.2%—
WeirdML78%—
ALE-Bench996.5—
AlgoTune1.47—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Terminal-Bench79.8%—
APEX-Agents46.3%—
Remote Labor Index4.2%—
τ²-bench Banking27.3%—
Cybench93%—
DeepResearch Bench55.3%—
GBAEval44.1%—
LMArena Search1253—
METR Time Horizons78.9%—
Vending-Bench 28,018—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Hard Prompts15271337
ARC-AGI-269.2%—
SimpleBench67.6%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark83.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)92.1%—
ARC-AGI-194%—
Chess Puzzles17%—
EnigmaEval7.6%—
Thematic Generalization80.6%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
Mystery Game Puzzles25%—
DTBench91.2%—
LMCA55.8%—
Epoch Capabilities Index155.24—
ForecastBench60—

Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Math15191359
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)66%—
FrontierMath Tier 426.8%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions78.5%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202594.4%—
ProofBench50%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)40.7%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)22.9%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Expert15461356
GPQA Diamond90.5%—
Humanity's Last Exam34.4%—
SimpleQA Verified47%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.2%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Vision1316—
Furniture Assembly28.3%—
LMArena Document1507—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Non-English14891295
LMArena Chinese15511359
LMArena French15131366
LMArena German15021282
LMArena Japanese14841206
LMArena Korean14641238
LMArena Russian14971253
LMArena Spanish15101345

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Instruction Following15231318

Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Longer Query15201314
CL-bench20.7%—
CL-bench Life17%—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Text15031327
LMArena Creative Writing15051254
EQ-Bench Creative Writing18091280
LMArena Multi-Turn15131328
EQ-Bench 41223—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 40.0 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 114× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 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; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 40.4 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.6 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.

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