Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Claude Sonnet 4 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.8 vs 40.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.
NVIDIASummary
- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4 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 Claude Sonnet 4 leads 57.1 to 48.5.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.
- 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
| Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 40.8 | 40.0 |
| Released | 2025-05-22 | 2026-08-11 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 200K | 262K |
| Max output | 64K | 262K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $0.20 |
| Results tracked | 58 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 43.5 (#88), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1414 | 1375 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 64.9% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 61.3% | — |
| SciCode | 40% | — |
| GSO | 4.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 46.1% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 655.35 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4: 38.5 (#31), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | 33.1% | — |
| Cybench | 35% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 46.6% | — |
| OSWorld | 43.9% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 62% | — |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 22.9 (#187), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1372 | 1337 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 5.9% | — |
| SimpleBench | 45.5% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 73% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 40% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 3.1% | — |
| DTBench | 77.1% | — |
| LMCA | 29% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.69 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60.2 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 43.3 (#80), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1375 | 1359 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 71.1% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 60.2% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 84.4% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 4.1% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 41.8 (#108), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1372 | 1356 |
| GPQA Diamond | 79.2% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 7.8% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 84.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 13.2% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 70.6% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4: 26.2 (#121), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1191 | — |
| GeoBench | 37% | — |
| VPCT | 34% | — |
| MindCube | 44.8% | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 46.7 (#156), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1333 | 1295 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1350 | 1359 |
| LMArena French | 1363 | 1366 |
| LMArena German | 1331 | 1282 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1302 | 1206 |
| LMArena Korean | 1291 | 1238 |
| LMArena Russian | 1355 | 1253 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1357 | 1345 |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 71.7 (#145), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1376 | 1318 |
| IFEval | 84% | — |
Long Context Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 33.7 (#259), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1398 | 1314 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 46.9% | — |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 57.1 (#132), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1351 | 1327 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1345 | 1254 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1483 | 1280 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1376 | 1328 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 81.4% | — |
| WildBench | 83.8% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4 better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Claude Sonnet 4 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.8 vs 40.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4 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 Sonnet 4 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.5 versus 40.4 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 Claude Sonnet 4 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?
18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4 has 58 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.