GPT-6 Luna (Max) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

Which is better for the money: GPT-6 Luna (Max) by OpenAI or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

OpenAIGPT-6 Luna (Max)On the frontier

Intelligence: 38.10
Total cost: $122

NVIDIANemotron 3.5 LightningOff the frontier

Intelligence: 12.90
Total cost: $92.8

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 25.2 points higher (38.1 vs 12.9) but costs 1.3× as much to run the benchmark ($122 vs $92.8; both mid-range class). Pick GPT-6 Luna (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Nemotron 3.5 Lightning.

Metric	GPT-6 Luna (Max)	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	38.1	12.9	−66.1% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 66.1% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$122.05	$92.76	−24.0% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 24.0% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	93.85s	8.97s	−90.4% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 90.4% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.10 / $0.50	$0.06 / $0.20
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs GPT-6 Luna (Max): 66.1% less intelligence, 24.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 90.4% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-6 Luna (Max): what beats it Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GPT-6 Luna (Max) 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 Luna (Xhigh) scores 34.60 for $66.8.

GPT-6 Luna (Max)Nemotron 3.5 LightningToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/gpt-6-luna/nemotron-3-5-lightning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-6-luna/nemotron-3-5-lightning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill