Model comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs o3-pro
o3-pro is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 40.0 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 400× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-pro's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
NVIDIASummary
- The widest gap is in long context, where o3-pro leads 72.2 to 39.9.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $20 / $80 for o3-pro.
- 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-pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 40.0 | 42.9 |
| Released | 2026-08-11 | 2025-06-10 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 200K |
| Max output | 262K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $20 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.20 | $80 |
| Results tracked | 18 | 12 |
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Category by category
Coding o3-pro leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141), o3-pro: 55.5 (#24)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | — | 84.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 58.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1375 | — |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127), o3-pro: 23.8 (#171)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 4.9% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 72.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 59.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1337 | — |
| DTBench | — | 86.9% |
| LMCA | — | 38.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 147.42 |
Math Not comparable
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155), o3-pro: —
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | — |
Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154), o3-pro: 29.5 (#238)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Confabulations | — | 14.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 23.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180), o3-pro: —
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| 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
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170), o3-pro: —
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | — |
Long Context o3-pro leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165), o3-pro: 72.2 (#1)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 97.2% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1314 | — |
Writing & Preference o3-pro leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201), o3-pro: 57.1 (#133)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1327 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 84.4% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1328 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than o3-pro?
o3-pro is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 40.0 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 400× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-pro's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or o3-pro?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens; o3-pro lists at $20 and $80.
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or o3-pro better for coding?
o3-pro scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 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 Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and o3-pro share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and o3-pro has 12.