Gemini 4 Carbon (High) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Gemini 4 Carbon (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 2026-10-30.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 4 Carbon (High) scores 53.9 points higher (59.4 vs 5.5) but costs 36× as much to run the benchmark ($8240 vs $227; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 4 Carbon (High) when you need intelligence above 5.5, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 5.5 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 4 Carbon (High) | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 59.4 | 5.5 | −90.7% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 90.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $8,239.69 | $227.02 | −97.2% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 97.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 110.18s | 9.09s | −91.7% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 91.7% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Gemini 4 Carbon (High): 90.7% less intelligence, 97.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 91.7% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Terra (Medium) scores 38.10 for $190.
Gemini 4 Carbon (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/gemini-4-carbon/nemotron-3-5-lightning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-4-carbon/nemotron-3-5-lightning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill