Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA or Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) 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 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) scores 10.0 points higher (22.9 vs 12.9) but costs 6.0× as much to run the benchmark ($596 vs $99.0; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.9 | 22.9 | +77.5% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 77.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $99.03 | $596.33 | +502.2% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 6.0× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.23s | 15.29s | +85.8% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 85.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.20 | $0.60 / $2.70 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 77.5% more intelligence, 502.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 85.8% slower 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 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Nemotron 3.5 LightningNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning)Today'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/nvidia-nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/nvidia-nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill