Ministral 3 3B vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Ministral 3 3B by Mistral or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores 8.1 points higher (12.9 vs 4.8) but costs 8.1× as much to run the benchmark ($99.0 vs $12.2; mid-range vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when you need intelligence above 4.8, and Ministral 3 3B when 4.8 is enough.
| Metric | Ministral 3 3B | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 4.8 | 12.9 | +168.8% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 2.7× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $12.23 | $99.03 | +709.7% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 8.1× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 3.29s | 8.23s | +150.2% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 150.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.10 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Ministral 3 3B: 168.8% more intelligence, 709.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 150.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Ministral 3 3B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
Ministral 3 3BNemotron 3.5 LightningToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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