Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 30.7 points higher (53.6 vs 22.9) but costs 3.1× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $697; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 22.9, and Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) when 22.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 22.9 | −57.3% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 57.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $696.84 | −67.9% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 67.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 18.94s | −44.0% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 44.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.60 / $2.70 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 57.3% less intelligence, 67.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 44.0% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/nvidia-nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/nvidia-nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill