Nemotron 3.5 Lightning logo
NVIDIA
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Open weights model

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Released August 2026

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning Intelligence, Performance & Price Analysis

API Provider Benchmarks

Model summary

Intelligence

24
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
4 out of 4 units for Intelligence.

Speed

N/A
Output tokens per second
Unknown out of 4 units for Speed.

Input Price

$0.00
USD per 1M tokens
1 out of 4 units for Input Price.

Output Price

$0.00
USD per 1M tokens
1 out of 4 units for Output Price.

Verbosity

100M
Output tokens from Intelligence Index
4 out of 4 units for Verbosity.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is amongst the leading models in intelligence and well priced when comparing to other open weight models of similar size. The model supports text input, outputs text, and has a 1M tokens context window.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores 24 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing it well above average among comparable models (median: 9). When evaluating the Intelligence Index, it generated 100M tokens, which is very verbose in comparison to the median of 40M.

Pricing for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is $0.00 per 1M input tokens (competitively priced, median: $0.04) and $0.00 per 1M output tokens (competitively priced, median: $0.15).

ReasoningYes

This page shows the reasoning version of this model.

A non-reasoning variant may also exist.

Input modality

Supports: text

Output modality

Supports: text

Context window1M
~1500 A4 pages of size 12 Arial font
Total parameters31.6B
Active parameters3.6B
Number of parameters active per token during inference
LicenseOpenMDW-1.1

Metrics are compared against models of the same class:

  • Non-reasoning models → compared only with other non-reasoning models
  • Reasoning models → compared across both reasoning and non-reasoning
  • Open weights models → compared only with other open weights models of the same size class:
    • Tiny: ≤4B parameters
    • Small: 4B–40B parameters
    • Medium: 40B–150B parameters
    • Large: >150B parameters
  • Proprietary models → compared across proprietary and open weights models of the same price range, using a blended 3:1 input/output price ratio:
    • <$0.15 per 1M tokens
    • $0.15–$1 per 1M tokens
    • >$1 per 1M tokens

Highlights

Intelligence

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · Higher is better

Speed

Output tokens per second · Higher is better

Cost per Task

Weighted average cost (USD) per Intelligence Index task · Lower is better

Intelligence

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1.1 incorporates 9 evaluations: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1.1 includes: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index by Open Weights / Proprietary

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1.1 incorporates 9 evaluations: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1.1 includes: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Indicates whether the model weights are available. Models are labelled as 'Commercial Use Restricted' if the weights are available but commercial use is limited (typically requires obtaining a paid license).

Benchmarks

Intelligence Evaluations

Intelligence evaluations measured independently by Artificial Analysis · Higher is better
See more
GDPval-AA v2

Agentic real-world work tasks, (Elo-500)/2000

𝜏³-BankingUpdated

Agentic tool use

Terminal-Bench v2.1

Agentic coding & terminal use

SciCode

Coding

Humanity's Last ExamUpdated

Reasoning & knowledge

GPQA Diamond

Scientific reasoning

CritPt

Physics reasoning

AA-Omniscience AccuracyUpdated

Knowledge

AA-Omniscience Non-Hallucination RateUpdated

1 - hallucination rate

AA-LCRUpdated

Long context reasoning

AA-Briefcase

Agentic knowledge work, Elo

AutomationBench-AA

Agentic SaaS workflows

Harvey LAB-AA

Legal agentic work, criterion pass rate

EnterpriseOps-Gym-AANew

Agentic business operations

IFBench

Instruction following

APEX-Agents-AA

Long-horizon agentic tasks

ITBench-AA

Kubernetes incident root-cause analysis

MMMU-Pro

Visual reasoning

Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

While model intelligence generally translates across use cases, specific evaluations may be more relevant for certain use cases.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1.1 includes: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

AA-Omniscience

AA-Omniscience Index

AA-Omniscience Index (higher is better) measures knowledge reliability and hallucination. It rewards correct answers, penalizes hallucinations, and has no penalty for refusing to answer. Scores range from -100 to 100, where 0 means as many correct as incorrect answers, and negative scores mean more incorrect than correct.
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

AA-Omniscience Index (higher is better) measures knowledge reliability and hallucination. It rewards correct answers, penalizes hallucinations, and has no penalty for refusing to answer. Scores range from -100 to 100, where 0 means as many correct as incorrect answers, and negative scores mean more incorrect than correct.

Openness Index

Artificial Analysis Openness Index: Score

Openness Index assesses model openness on a 0 to 100 normalized scale (higher is more open)
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Intelligence Index Comparisons

Intelligence Index vs. Cost per Intelligence Index Task

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · Weighted average cost (USD) per Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index task
Most attractive quadrant
Pareto line
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Weighted average cost per Intelligence Index task. Each evaluation’s cost is calculated from input, cache hit, cache write, reasoning, and answer token prices, divided by task count, and weighted by its Intelligence Index weight.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1.1 includes: GDPval-AA v2, 𝜏³-Banking, Terminal-Bench v2.1, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Token Use

Output Tokens per Intelligence Index Task

Weighted average number of output tokens used to run one task in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

The number of tokens required per Intelligence Index task. This is calculated by multiplying the output tokens per eval by the relative weights of each benchmark in the Intelligence Index, then dividing by task count (excluding repeats).

Cost

Cost per Intelligence Index Task

Weighted average cost (USD) per Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index task, segmented by token type. Lower is better
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Weighted average cost per Intelligence Index task. Each evaluation’s cost is calculated from input, cache hit, cache write, reasoning, and answer token prices, divided by task count, and weighted by its Intelligence Index weight.

Cost to Run Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Cost (USD) to run all evaluations in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

The cost to run the evaluations in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, calculated using the model's input, cache hit, cache write, reasoning, and answer token prices and the number of tokens used across evaluations (excluding repeats).

Pricing: Cache Hit, Input, and Output

Price (USD per M Tokens)
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Price per token for cached prompts (previously processed), typically offering a significant discount compared to regular input price, represented as USD per million tokens. The values shown here are the cache hit price; cache write and cache storage are billed separately and vary by provider — see "Cache pricing by provider" for detail.

Context Window

Context Window

Context window: tokens limit · Higher is better
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Larger context windows are relevant to RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) LLM workflows which typically involve reasoning and information retrieval of large amounts of data.

Maximum number of combined input & output tokens. Output tokens commonly have a significantly lower limit (varied by model).

Model Size (Open Weights Models Only)

Model Size: Total and Active Parameters

Comparison between total model parameters and parameters active during inference
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

The total number of trainable weights and biases in the model, expressed in billions. These parameters are learned during training and determine the model's ability to process and generate responses.

The number of parameters actually executed during each inference forward pass, expressed in billions. For Mixture of Experts (MoE) models, a routing mechanism selects a subset of experts per token, resulting in fewer active than total parameters. Dense models use all parameters, so active equals total.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning was released on August 11, 2026.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning was created by NVIDIA.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores 24 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing it well above average among other open weight models of similar size (median: 9).

When evaluated on the Intelligence Index, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning generated 100M output tokens, which is at the higher end compared to other open weight models of similar size (median: 40M).

Yes, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is a reasoning model. It uses extended thinking or chain-of-thought reasoning to work through complex problems before providing an answer.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning supports text input.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning supports text output.

No, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does not support image input. It can only process text.

No, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is not multimodal. It only supports text input.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has a context window of 1.0M tokens. This determines how much text and conversation history the model can process in a single request.

Yes, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is open weights. The model weights are publicly available.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 31.6 billion parameters (3.6 billion active).

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model with 31.6 billion total parameters, but only 3.6 billion active parameters are used during inference.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is released under the OpenMDW-1.1 license. This license allows commercial use. View license

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning achieves a score of 24 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. This composite benchmark evaluates models across reasoning, knowledge, mathematics, and coding.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is an open weights model that can be self-hosted. View providers

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is an open weights model that can be downloaded and self-hosted. Compare providers