# Magistral Medium vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

> Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 35.2 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/magistral-medium-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Medium scores higher in 0 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 8 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 26.8 to 8.6.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $5 for Magistral Medium.

## Snapshot

| | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 35.2 | 40.0 |
| Rank | 227 | 155 |
| Context | 262K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $5 | $0.20 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Magistral Medium: 39.1 (#161)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1319 | 1375 |
| SciCode | 39.2% | — |

## Reasoning

- Magistral Medium: 8.6 (#348)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1267 | 1337 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 16.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 6.1% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |

## Math

- Magistral Medium: 35.1 (#189)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1250 | 1359 |

## Knowledge

- Magistral Medium: 33.5 (#202)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1223 | 1356 |

## Multilingual

- Magistral Medium: 39.6 (#224)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1232 | 1295 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1227 | 1359 |
| LMArena French | 1267 | 1366 |
| LMArena German | 1248 | 1282 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1175 | 1206 |
| LMArena Korean | 1125 | 1238 |
| LMArena Russian | 1224 | 1253 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1271 | 1345 |

## Instruction Following

- Magistral Medium: 66.0 (#211)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1254 | 1318 |

## Long Context

- Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#183)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1295 | 1314 |

## Writing & Preference

- Magistral Medium: 46.3 (#219)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1255 | 1327 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1245 | 1254 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1275 | 1328 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1280 |

## FAQ

### Is Magistral Medium better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 35.2 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Magistral Medium 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; Magistral Medium lists at $2 and $5.

### Is Magistral Medium or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 39.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 262K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Magistral Medium and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Medium has 22 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.