# Claude Opus 4 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

> Claude Opus 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.1 to 40.0 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 343× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-4-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 18

## Summary

- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4 scores higher in 7 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 1 category; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Opus 4 leads 61.2 to 48.5.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $15 / $75 for Claude Opus 4.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 200K.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 43.1 | 40.0 |
| Rank | 100 | 155 |
| Context | 200K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $15 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $75 | $0.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 4: 47.2 (#62)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1442 | 1375 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 70.7% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 67.6% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 72% | — |
| GSO | 6.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.7% | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.33 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 4: 34.8 (#42)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | 38% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 46.8% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1127 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 63.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 4: 27.3 (#121)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1399 | 1337 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 8.6% | — |
| SimpleBench | 58.8% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 74.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 35.7% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 5.6% | — |
| DTBench | 81.6% | — |
| LMCA | 37.4% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 142.67 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |

## Math

- Claude Opus 4: 42.0 (#86)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1390 | 1359 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 64.4% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 61.6% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 85% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 4.5% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 4: 44.0 (#88)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1386 | 1356 |
| GPQA Diamond | 76.3% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 10.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 87.5% | — |
| Confabulations | 15.9% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 70.8% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 4: 31.5 (#106)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1192 | — |
| GeoBench | 49% | — |
| VPCT | 38% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 4: 48.8 (#138)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1362 | 1295 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1386 | 1359 |
| LMArena French | 1372 | 1366 |
| LMArena German | 1391 | 1282 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1331 | 1206 |
| LMArena Korean | 1321 | 1238 |
| LMArena Russian | 1392 | 1253 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1389 | 1345 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 4: 77.1 (#28)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1406 | 1318 |
| IFEval | 91.8% | — |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 4: 39.6 (#172)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1422 | 1314 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 61.1% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 4: 61.2 (#89)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1377 | 1327 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1387 | 1254 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1580 | 1280 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1396 | 1328 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 83.6% | — |
| WildBench | 85.2% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 4 better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Claude Opus 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.1 to 40.0 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 343× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4 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; Claude Opus 4 lists at $15 and $75.

### Is Claude Opus 4 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?

Claude Opus 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.2 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 Claude Opus 4 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4 has 56 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.