Mistral Small 3.2 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Which is better for the money: Mistral Small 3.2 by Mistral or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Mistral Small 3.2: 84.3% more intelligence, 23.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 14.6% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Mistral Small 3.2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 7.0 | 12.9 | +84.3% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 84.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $121.78 | $92.76 | −23.8% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 23.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 10.52s | 8.98s | −14.6% Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 14.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.07 / $0.20 | $0.06 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Mistral Small 3.2 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.
Mistral Small 3.2Nemotron 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/mistral-small-3-2/nemotron-3-5-lightning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mistral-small-3-2/nemotron-3-5-lightning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill