Claude Haiku 5.5 (Max) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Max) 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 Haiku 5.5 (Max) scores 30.5 points higher (43.4 vs 12.9) but costs 3.6× as much to run the benchmark ($330 vs $92.8; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Haiku 5.5 (Max) when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Max) | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 43.4 | 12.9 | −70.3% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 70.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $330.25 | $92.76 | −71.9% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 71.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 347.67s | 8.72s | −97.5% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 97.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Max): 70.3% less intelligence, 71.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 97.5% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
- 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 Haiku 5.5 (Max)Nemotron 3.5 LightningToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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