Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) by Google 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
Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) scores 19.7 points higher (32.6 vs 12.9) but costs 46× as much to run the benchmark ($4222 vs $92.8; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 32.6 | 12.9 | −60.4% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 60.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,222.12 | $92.76 | −97.8% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 97.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.65s | 9.16s | −45.0% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 45.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.50 / $9.00 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Gemini 3.5 Flash (High): 60.4% less intelligence, 97.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 45.0% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (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.
Gemini 3.5 Flash (High)Nemotron 3.5 LightningToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
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