Model comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Phi-4
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
NVIDIA
MicrosoftSummary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher in 8 categories and Phi-4 in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 37.5 to 20.8.
- Both cost about the same: $0.05 input and $0.20 output per million tokens.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 40.0 | 31.2 |
| Released | 2026-08-11 | 2024-12-11 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 128K |
| Max output | 262K | 4K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $0.07 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.20 | $0.14 |
| Results tracked | 18 | 37 |
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Category by category
Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141), Phi-4: 34.4 (#239)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1375 | 1231 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.5% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 30.7% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 55.4% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —, Phi-4: 22.8 (#128)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 28.8% |
| BALROG | — | 11.6% |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127), Phi-4: 17.7 (#291)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1337 | 1220 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 1% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 47.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 45.2% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 130.42 |
| LiveBench | — | 41.6% |
Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155), Phi-4: 20.8 (#285)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1246 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 13.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 42% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 64.9% |
Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154), Phi-4: 32.6 (#209)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | 1203 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 56.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 29.4% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 3.7% |
| MMLU | — | 84.8% |
Multilingual Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180), Phi-4: 37.2 (#237)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1295 | 1197 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1359 | 1212 |
| LMArena French | 1366 | 1224 |
| LMArena German | 1282 | 1222 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1206 | 1158 |
| LMArena Korean | 1238 | 1151 |
| LMArena Russian | 1253 | 1209 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1345 | 1234 |
Instruction Following Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170), Phi-4: 60.4 (#251)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | 1201 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 58.4% |
Long Context Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165), Phi-4: 36.9 (#226)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1314 | 1217 |
Writing & Preference Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201), Phi-4: 40.5 (#244)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1327 | 1217 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | 1182 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1328 | 1206 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 62.6% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 25.6% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than Phi-4?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Phi-4?
Phi-4 is cheaper. It lists at $0.07 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; Nemotron 3.5 Lightning lists at $0.05 and $0.20.
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Phi-4 better for coding?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 34.4 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 Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Phi-4 share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and Phi-4 has 37.