Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, 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.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 51.90
Total cost: $2177

NVIDIANVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 8.90
Total cost: $63.7

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallb… scores 43.0 points higher (51.9 vs 8.9) but costs 34× as much to run the benchmark ($2177 vs $63.7; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallb… when you need intelligence above 8.9, and NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoni… when 8.9 is enough.

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)	NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	51.9	8.9	−82.9% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 82.9% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,176.82	$63.74	−97.1% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 97.1% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	33.80s	10.10s	−70.1% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 70.1% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$0.05 / $0.20
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback): 82.9% less intelligence, 97.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 70.1% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback): what beats it NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
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.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-xhigh/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-xhigh/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill