Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) scores 7.8 points higher (20.7 vs 12.9) but costs 16× as much to run the benchmark ($1501 vs $92.8; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 12.9 | −37.7% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 37.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $92.76 | −93.8% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 93.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.00s | 8.97s | −57.3% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 57.3% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 37.7% less intelligence, 93.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 57.3% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) scores 34.60 for $66.8.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Nemotron 3.5 LightningToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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