Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (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 2026-10-25.
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… scores 27.9 points higher (40.8 vs 12.9) but costs 6.7× as much to run the benchmark ($622 vs $92.8; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 12.9 | −68.4% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 68.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $92.76 | −85.1% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 85.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.11s | 8.98s | +47.0% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 47.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 68.4% less intelligence, 85.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 47.0% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- 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-sonnet-5-5-medium/nemotron-3-5-lightning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium/nemotron-3-5-lightning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill