Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
NVIDIASummary
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 26.8 to 6.8.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $1.50 for Magistral Small.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 40.0 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2026-08-11 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 262K |
| Max output | 40K | 262K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $0.20 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1375 |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1337 |
| DTBench | 61.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | — |
Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1359 |
Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | — |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1356 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1295 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1359 |
| LMArena French | — | 1366 |
| LMArena German | — | 1282 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1206 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1238 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1253 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1345 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1318 |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1314 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1327 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1254 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1280 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1328 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small 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; Magistral Small lists at $0.50 and $1.50.
Is Magistral Small or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 38.4 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 Small and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.