Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) 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 2026-10-27.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) scores 1.4 points higher (24.3 vs 22.9) but costs 1.1× as much to run the benchmark ($653 vs $596; both premium class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 22.9 | −5.8% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 5.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $596.33 | −8.6% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 8.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.89s | 14.75s | +65.9% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 65.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.60 / $2.70 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 5.8% less intelligence, 8.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 65.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/nvidia-nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/nvidia-nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill