# Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs o1-mini

> Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning-vs-o1-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher in 6 categories and o1-mini in 2 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 25.7 to 8.9.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 39.3 | 33.7 |
| Rank | 156 | 230 |
| Context | 262K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.16 | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)
- o1-mini: 35.1 (#218)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1370 | 1362 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 32.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 36.3% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 48% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 89% |
| MBPP+ | — | 78.8% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
- o1-mini: 24.3 (#112)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 10% |

## Reasoning

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)
- o1-mini: 8.9 (#340)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | 1333 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 0.8% |
| SimpleBench | — | 18.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 14% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 72.3% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 57.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 135.82 |
| LiveBench | — | 57.8% |

## Math

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)
- o1-mini: 33.7 (#168)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1355 | 1358 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 46.9% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 62% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 89.2% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |

## Knowledge

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)
- o1-mini: 34.8 (#180)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1354 | 1316 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 62.4% |
| Confabulations | — | 18.6% |

## Multilingual

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)
- o1-mini: 43.8 (#177)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1292 | 1289 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1356 | 1314 |
| LMArena French | 1369 | 1292 |
| LMArena German | 1280 | 1278 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1213 | 1245 |
| LMArena Korean | 1233 | 1223 |
| LMArena Russian | 1257 | 1283 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1321 | 1302 |

## Instruction Following

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)
- o1-mini: 67.0 (#200)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1317 | 1304 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 65.4% |

## Long Context

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)
- o1-mini: 40.1 (#156)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1312 | 1321 |

## Writing & Preference

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)
- o1-mini: 48.6 (#196)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1324 | 1317 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | 1244 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1327 | 1314 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 64.9% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 40.9% |

## FAQ

### Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than o1-mini?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or o1-mini better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.6 versus 35.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and o1-mini share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and o1-mini has 39.