Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 33.4 points higher (42.3 vs 8.9) but costs 13× as much to run the benchmark ($860 vs $63.7; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoni… when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.3 | 8.9 | −79.0% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 79.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $860.33 | $63.74 | −92.6% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 92.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.19s | 10.10s | −23.4% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 23.4% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.05 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 79.0% less intelligence, 92.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 23.4% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) scores 34.50 for $56.4.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill