Model comparison
Magistral Medium vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 34.8 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
NVIDIASummary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Medium scores higher in 0 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 8 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 25.7 to 8.7.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $5 for Magistral Medium.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 34.8 | 39.3 |
| Released | 2025-03-17 | 2026-08-11 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 262K |
| Max output | 16K | 262K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.06 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.16 |
| Results tracked | 22 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Medium: 38.6 (#161), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1319 | 1370 |
| SciCode | 39.2% | — |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Medium: 8.7 (#342), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1267 | 1335 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 16.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 6.1% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Medium: 32.4 (#187), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1249 | 1355 |
Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Medium: 32.9 (#199), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1222 | 1354 |
Multilingual Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Medium: 39.8 (#219), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1232 | 1292 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | 1356 |
| LMArena French | 1268 | 1369 |
| LMArena German | 1248 | 1280 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1176 | 1213 |
| LMArena Korean | 1125 | 1233 |
| LMArena Russian | 1224 | 1257 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1269 | 1321 |
Instruction Following Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Medium: 66.2 (#207), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1254 | 1317 |
Long Context Too close to call
Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#178), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1295 | 1312 |
Writing & Preference Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Medium: 46.5 (#214), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1255 | 1324 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1245 | 1254 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1275 | 1327 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1280 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Medium better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 34.8 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Magistral 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; Magistral Medium lists at $2 and $5.
Is Magistral Medium or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.6 versus 38.6 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Medium and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Medium has 22 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.