Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) 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.
Depends on your budget
Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallb… scores 36.0 points higher (48.9 vs 12.9) but costs 43× as much to run the benchmark ($3983 vs $92.8; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallb… when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 48.9 | 12.9 | −73.6% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 73.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,983.28 | $92.76 | −97.7% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 97.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 18.10s | 8.97s | −50.4% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 50.4% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $10.0 / $50.0 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback): 73.6% less intelligence, 97.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 50.4% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) scores 34.60 for $66.8.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/nemotron-3-5-lightning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/nemotron-3-5-lightning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill