Granite 4.2 30B vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 30B by IBM 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.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Granite 4.2 30B: 1.6% more intelligence, 16.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 84.5% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 30B | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.7 | 12.9 | +1.6% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 1.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $110.83 | $92.76 | −16.3% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 16.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 57.71s | 8.97s | −84.5% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 84.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.16 / $0.65 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Granite 4.2 30B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) scores 34.60 for $66.8.
Granite 4.2 30BNemotron 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/granite-4-2-30b/nemotron-3-5-lightning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-30b/nemotron-3-5-lightning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill