# Gemini 2.5 Pro vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

> Gemini 2.5 Pro is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.0 to 40.0 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 39× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 2.5 Pro's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemini-2-5-pro-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 18

## Summary

- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 2.5 Pro scores higher in 7 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in long context, where Gemini 2.5 Pro leads 59.8 to 39.9.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $1.25 / $10 for Gemini 2.5 Pro.
- Gemini 2.5 Pro accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 262K.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 45.0 | 40.0 |
| Rank | 75 | 155 |
| Context | 1.05M | 262K |
| Input $/M | $1.25 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $10 | $0.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Gemini 2.5 Pro: 42.4 (#101)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1452 | 1375 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 57.6% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 53.6% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 83.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1227 | — |
| SciCode | 42.8% | — |
| GSO | 3.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 54% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 85.9% | — |
| CadEval | 64% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.52 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.51 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 2.5 Pro: 29.2 (#88)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 32.6% | — |
| GDPval | 23.3% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 0.8% | — |
| TheAgentCompany | 30.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 13.7% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 42.8% | — |
| BALROG | 43.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1142 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 55.4% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 573.64 | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 2.5 Pro: 28.8 (#99)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1455 | 1337 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 4.9% | — |
| SimpleBench | 62.4% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 70.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 41% | — |
| CritPt | 2% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 20% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 5.6% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 89.8% | — |
| DTBench | 82.4% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 79.9% | — |
| LMCA | 34.8% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 145.32 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.3 | — |
| LiveBench | 82.3% | — |

## Math

- Gemini 2.5 Pro: 32.5 (#213)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1450 | 1359 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 24.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 0% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 84.7% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 41.6% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 90.2% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 95.9% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 14.1% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 2.5 Pro: 56.0 (#46)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1452 | 1356 |
| GPQA Diamond | 85.3% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 21.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 86.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 10.6% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 74.9% | — |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 2.5 Pro: 45.2 (#18)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1263 | — |
| GeoBench | 86% | — |
| VPCT | 48% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1421 | — |
| SpatialViz-Bench | 44.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 2.5 Pro: 55.3 (#31)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1451 | 1295 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1507 | 1359 |
| LMArena French | 1472 | 1366 |
| LMArena German | 1487 | 1282 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1461 | 1206 |
| LMArena Korean | 1434 | 1238 |
| LMArena Russian | 1461 | 1253 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1473 | 1345 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 2.5 Pro: 75.0 (#75)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1437 | 1318 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 80.6% | — |
| IFEval | 84% | — |

## Long Context

- Gemini 2.5 Pro: 59.8 (#5)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1449 | 1314 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 91.7% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 2.5 Pro: 63.7 (#62)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1327 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1454 | 1254 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1421 | 1280 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1453 | 1328 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 83.8% | — |
| WildBench | 85.7% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 67.8% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 2.5 Pro better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Gemini 2.5 Pro is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.0 to 40.0 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 39× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 2.5 Pro's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 2.5 Pro 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; Gemini 2.5 Pro lists at $1.25 and $10.

### Is Gemini 2.5 Pro or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?

Gemini 2.5 Pro scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 40.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 2.5 Pro does, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemini 2.5 Pro and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 2.5 Pro has 78 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.