Model comparison
Mercury vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 8 shared benchmarks.
NVIDIASummary
- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury scores higher in 0 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 6 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 26.8 to 17.5.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mercury | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 37.6 | 40.0 |
| Released | — | 2026-08-11 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | — | 262K |
| Max output | — | 262K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $0.20 |
| Results tracked | 9 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mercury: 38.7 (#170), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1322 | 1375 |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mercury: 17.5 (#293), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1285 | 1337 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 21.6% | — |
Math Not comparable
Mercury: —, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1359 |
Knowledge Not comparable
Mercury: —, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | — | 1356 |
Multilingual Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mercury: 41.6 (#206), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1260 | 1295 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1359 |
| LMArena French | — | 1366 |
| LMArena German | — | 1282 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1206 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1238 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1253 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1345 |
Instruction Following Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mercury: 65.2 (#224), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1239 | 1318 |
Long Context Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mercury: 38.4 (#198), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1266 | 1314 |
Writing & Preference Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mercury: 46.2 (#221), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1282 | 1327 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1191 | 1254 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1282 | 1328 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1280 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.
Is Mercury or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 38.7 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Mercury and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?
8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury has 9 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.