# Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs o1

> Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and o1 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.0 vs 40.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning-vs-o1
- 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 1 category and o1 in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in long context, where o1 leads 50.3 to 39.9.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $15 / $60 for o1.
- 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

| | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 40.0 | 40.9 |
| Rank | 155 | 143 |
| Context | 262K | 200K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $15 |
| Output $/M | $0.20 | $60 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141)
- o1: 46.1 (#70)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1375 | 1367 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 61.7% |
| WeirdML | — | 47.6% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 69.7% |
| CadEval | — | 56% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 89% |
| MBPP+ | — | 80.2% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
- o1: 24.6 (#117)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 10% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 51.1% |

## Reasoning

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127)
- o1: 27.9 (#111)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1337 | 1371 |
| SimpleBench | — | 41.7% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 30.7% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 15% |
| EnigmaEval | — | 5.7% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 91.6% |
| DTBench | — | 74.7% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 65.5% |
| LMCA | — | 22.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 141.91 |
| LiveBench | — | 75.7% |

## Math

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155)
- o1: 36.1 (#175)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1388 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 14.7% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 73.3% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 80.3% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 94.7% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 9.3% |

## Knowledge

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154)
- o1: 41.5 (#110)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | 1361 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 76.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 41.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 11.7% |

## Multimodal

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
- o1: 34.2 (#93)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1168 |
| GeoBench | — | 80% |
| VPCT | — | 37% |
| SpatialViz-Bench | — | 41.4% |

## Multilingual

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180)
- o1: 48.6 (#142)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1295 | 1358 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1359 | 1394 |
| LMArena French | 1366 | 1344 |
| LMArena German | 1282 | 1337 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1206 | 1346 |
| LMArena Korean | 1238 | 1396 |
| LMArena Russian | 1253 | 1356 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1345 | 1345 |

## Instruction Following

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170)
- o1: 74.8 (#86)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | 1367 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 81.5% |

## Long Context

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165)
- o1: 50.3 (#9)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1314 | 1378 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 83.3% |

## Writing & Preference

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201)
- o1: 55.6 (#144)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1327 | 1366 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | 1348 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1328 | 1369 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 70.2% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 65.4% |

## FAQ

### Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than o1?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and o1 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.0 vs 40.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or o1?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens; o1 lists at $15 and $60.

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

o1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.1 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 Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and o1 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and o1 has 52.