Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Nemotron 3.5 Super VL
Which is better for the money: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA or Nemotron 3.5 Super VL 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 Super VL scores 13.6 points higher (26.5 vs 12.9) but costs 2.9× as much to run the benchmark ($283 vs $99.0; both mid-range class). Pick Nemotron 3.5 Super VL when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Nemotron 3.5 Lightning.
| Metric | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Nemotron 3.5 Super VL | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.9 | 26.5 | +105.4% Nemotron 3.5 Super VL is 2.1× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $99.03 | $282.51 | +185.3% Nemotron 3.5 Super VL is 2.9× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.23s | 6.20s | −24.7% Nemotron 3.5 Super VL is 24.7% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.20 | $0.23 / $0.57 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Nemotron 3.5 Super VL vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 105.4% more intelligence, 185.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 24.7% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- 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.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Nemotron 3.5 LightningNemotron 3.5 Super VLToday'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/nemotron-3-5-lightning/nemotron-3-5-super-vl · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/nemotron-3-5-super-vl?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill