Model comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs o3-mini
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
NVIDIASummary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher in 3 categories and o3-mini in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 26.8 to 16.3.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o3-mini.
- 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
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 40.0 | 36.7 |
| Released | 2026-08-11 | 2024-12-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 200K |
| Max output | 262K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $1.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.20 | $4.40 |
| Results tracked | 18 | 51 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141), o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1375 | 1378 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 60.4% |
| SciCode | — | 39.8% |
| GSO | — | 1.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 82.7% |
| CadEval | — | 54% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —, o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127), o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1337 | 1366 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 3% |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 34.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 89.6% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 7% |
| DTBench | — | 68.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 70.6% |
| LMCA | — | 19% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 140.34 |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.6 |
| LiveBench | — | 75.9% |
Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155), o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1396 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 76.9% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 77.3% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |
Knowledge Too close to call
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154), o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | 1364 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 77% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |
Multilingual o3-mini leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180), o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1295 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1359 | 1379 |
| LMArena French | 1366 | 1334 |
| LMArena German | 1282 | 1303 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1206 | 1286 |
| LMArena Korean | 1238 | 1314 |
| LMArena Russian | 1253 | 1304 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1345 | 1321 |
Instruction Following o3-mini leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170), o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | 1337 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 84.4% |
Long Context Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165), o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1314 | 1343 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |
Writing & Preference o3-mini leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201), o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1327 | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1328 | 1320 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 50.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than o3-mini?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or o3-mini?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens; o3-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or o3-mini better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (40.4 vs 40.8); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and o3-mini share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.