# Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs o3-pro

> o3-pro is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.7 to 39.3 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 412× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-pro's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning-vs-o3-pro
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in long context, where o3-pro leads 72.1 to 39.9.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $20 / $80 for o3-pro.
- 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 | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 39.3 | 42.7 |
| Rank | 156 | 94 |
| Context | 262K | 200K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $20 |
| Output $/M | $0.16 | $80 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)
- o3-pro: 55.1 (#22)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | — | 84.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 58.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1370 | — |

## Reasoning

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)
- o3-pro: 24.1 (#152)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 4.9% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 72.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 59.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | — |
| DTBench | — | 86.9% |
| LMCA | — | 38.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 147.43 |

## Math

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)
- o3-pro: —

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1355 | — |

## Knowledge

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)
- o3-pro: 29.0 (#234)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Confabulations | — | 14.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 23.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1354 | — |

## Multilingual

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)
- o3-pro: —

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1292 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1356 | — |
| LMArena French | 1369 | — |
| LMArena German | 1280 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1213 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1233 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1257 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1321 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)
- o3-pro: —

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1317 | — |

## Long Context

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)
- o3-pro: 72.1 (#1)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 97.2% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1312 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)
- o3-pro: 57.1 (#128)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1324 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 84.4% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1327 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than o3-pro?

o3-pro is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.7 to 39.3 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 412× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-pro's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or o3-pro?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; o3-pro lists at $20 and $80.

### Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or o3-pro better for coding?

o3-pro scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.1 versus 39.6 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 o3-pro share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and o3-pro has 12.