Llama 4 Maverick vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Llama 4 Maverick by Meta 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
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores 3.6 points higher (12.9 vs 9.3) but costs 2.1× as much to run the benchmark ($92.8 vs $44.0; mid-range vs budget cost classes). Pick Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Llama 4 Maverick.
| Metric | Llama 4 Maverick | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 9.3 | 12.9 | +38.7% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 38.7% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $43.98 | $92.76 | +110.9% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 2.1× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.18s | 9.16s | −18.1% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 18.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.92 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Llama 4 Maverick: 38.7% more intelligence, 110.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 18.1% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Llama 4 Maverick is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) scores 34.60 for $66.8.
Llama 4 MaverickNemotron 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/llama-4-maverick/nemotron-3-5-lightning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/llama-4-maverick/nemotron-3-5-lightning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill