# DeepSeek-V3 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

> DeepSeek-V3 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.2 vs 39.3), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/deepseek-v3-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 18

## Summary

- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-V3 scores higher in 5 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 3 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where DeepSeek-V3 leads 57.6 to 48.5.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $0.24 / $0.90 for DeepSeek-V3.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 164K.

## Snapshot

| | DeepSeek-V3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 39.2 | 39.3 |
| Rank | 157 | 156 |
| Context | 164K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.24 | $0.06 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $0.16 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- DeepSeek-V3: 41.9 (#99)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1368 | 1370 |
| Aider Polyglot | 55.1% | — |
| SciCode | 35.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 36.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 50% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 70.9% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 62.2% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 86.6% | — |
| MBPP+ | 73% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- DeepSeek-V3: —
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| METR Time Horizons | 49.6% | — |

## Reasoning

- DeepSeek-V3: 20.0 (#226)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1365 | 1335 |
| SimpleBench | 27.2% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 52.3% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 65.8% | — |
| DTBench | 64.8% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 60.9% | — |
| LMCA | 15.5% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 87.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 135.95 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.1 | — |
| HellaSwag | 88.9% | — |
| LiveBench | 66.9% | — |
| PIQA | 84.7% | — |
| WinoGrande | 85.2% | — |

## Math

- DeepSeek-V3: 30.4 (#208)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1373 | 1355 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 37.8% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 40.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 73.5% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 75.5% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 1.7% | — |

## Knowledge

- DeepSeek-V3: 37.5 (#147)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1352 | 1354 |
| GPQA Diamond | 67.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 72.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 26.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 53.8% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 95.3% | — |
| MMLU | 87.2% | — |
| TriviaQA | 82.9% | — |

## Multilingual

- DeepSeek-V3: 48.8 (#138)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1358 | 1292 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1390 | 1356 |
| LMArena French | 1386 | 1369 |
| LMArena German | 1374 | 1280 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1333 | 1213 |
| LMArena Korean | 1321 | 1233 |
| LMArena Russian | 1372 | 1257 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1358 | 1321 |

## Instruction Following

- DeepSeek-V3: 73.0 (#125)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1345 | 1317 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 81.5% | — |
| IFEval | 83.2% | — |

## Long Context

- DeepSeek-V3: 34.0 (#248)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1353 | 1312 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 50% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- DeepSeek-V3: 57.6 (#124)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1375 | 1324 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1364 | 1254 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1472 | 1280 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1389 | 1327 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77% | — |
| WildBench | 83% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 49.1% | — |

## FAQ

### Is DeepSeek-V3 better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

DeepSeek-V3 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.2 vs 39.3), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-V3 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; DeepSeek-V3 lists at $0.24 and $0.90.

### Is DeepSeek-V3 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?

DeepSeek-V3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.9 versus 39.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 164K.

### How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-V3 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-V3 has 60 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.