Llama 4 Scout vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Llama 4 Scout by Meta or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores 6.4 points higher (12.9 vs 6.5) but costs 1.3× as much to run the benchmark ($92.8 vs $73.6; both mid-range class). Pick Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Llama 4 Scout.
| Metric | Llama 4 Scout | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 6.5 | 12.9 | +98.5% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 98.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $73.56 | $92.76 | +26.1% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 26.1% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.97s | 8.97s | +80.5% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 80.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.18 / $0.66 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Llama 4 Scout: 98.5% more intelligence, 26.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 80.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Llama 4 Scout is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) scores 34.60 for $66.8.
- 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 ScoutNemotron 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/llama-4-scout/nemotron-3-5-lightning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/llama-4-scout/nemotron-3-5-lightning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill