# Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Phi-4

> Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning-vs-phi-4
- 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 8 categories and Phi-4 in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 34.7 to 19.6.
- Both cost about the same: $0.06 input and $0.16 output per million tokens.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 39.3 | 30.9 |
| Rank | 156 | 269 |
| Context | 262K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $0.07 |
| Output $/M | $0.16 | $0.14 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)
- Phi-4: 33.8 (#237)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1370 | 1231 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.5% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 30.7% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 55.4% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
- Phi-4: 22.6 (#120)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 28.8% |
| BALROG | — | 11.6% |

## Reasoning

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)
- Phi-4: 17.0 (#287)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | 1220 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 1% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 47.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 45.2% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 130.43 |
| LiveBench | — | 41.6% |

## Math

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)
- Phi-4: 19.6 (#279)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1355 | 1246 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 13.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 42% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 64.9% |

## Knowledge

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)
- Phi-4: 32.5 (#204)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1354 | 1203 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 56.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 29.4% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 3.7% |
| MMLU | — | 84.8% |

## Multilingual

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)
- Phi-4: 37.4 (#232)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1292 | 1197 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1356 | 1211 |
| LMArena French | 1369 | 1223 |
| LMArena German | 1280 | 1222 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1213 | 1158 |
| LMArena Korean | 1233 | 1151 |
| LMArena Russian | 1257 | 1209 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1321 | 1234 |

## Instruction Following

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)
- Phi-4: 60.6 (#246)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1317 | 1201 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 58.4% |

## Long Context

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)
- Phi-4: 36.9 (#221)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1312 | 1217 |

## Writing & Preference

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)
- Phi-4: 40.7 (#239)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1324 | 1217 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | 1182 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1327 | 1206 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 62.6% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 25.6% |

## FAQ

### Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than Phi-4?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Phi-4?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; Phi-4 lists at $0.07 and $0.14.

### Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Phi-4 better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.6 versus 33.8 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Phi-4 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and Phi-4 has 37.