Claude Opus 5 (High) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (High) by Anthropic or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (High) scores 35.2 points higher (48.1 vs 12.9) but costs 47× as much to run the benchmark ($4332 vs $92.8; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (High) when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (High) | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 48.1 | 12.9 | −73.2% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 73.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,331.68 | $92.76 | −97.9% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 97.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.99s | 9.16s | −56.4% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 56.4% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Claude Opus 5 (High): 73.2% less intelligence, 97.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 56.4% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- 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 Opus 5 (High)Nemotron 3.5 LightningToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-high/nemotron-3-5-lightning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-high/nemotron-3-5-lightning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill