Celeris-1 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Celeris-1 by Celeris or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores 6.6 points higher (12.9 vs 6.3) but costs 1.5× as much to run the benchmark ($92.8 vs $60.0; both mid-range class). Pick Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Celeris-1.
| Metric | Celeris-1 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 6.3 | 12.9 | +104.8% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 2.0× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $59.99 | $92.76 | +54.6% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 54.6% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 0.87s | 9.16s | +952.9% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 952.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.20 / $0.70 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Celeris-1: 104.8% more intelligence, 54.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 952.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Celeris-1 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) scores 34.50 for $56.4.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) scores 34.60 for $66.8.
Celeris-1Nemotron 3.5 LightningToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/celeris-1/nemotron-3-5-lightning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/celeris-1/nemotron-3-5-lightning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill