Lightning AI: Models Intelligence, Performance & Price

Lightning AI
Lightning AI

This analysis is intended to support you in choosing the best model provided by Lightning AI for your use-case.

Most Intelligent

#1
Gemma 4 31BGemma 4 31B
30

Intelligence index

Total 1 model

Fastest

#1
Gemma 4 31BGemma 4 31B
147 t/s

Output speed

Total 1 model

Lowest Price

#1
Gemma 4 31BGemma 4 31B
$0.17

Blended price (per 1M tokens)

Total 1 model

Lightning AI currently offers Gemma 4 31B.

Highlights

Intelligence

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · Higher is better

Speed

Output tokens per second · Higher is better

Price

USD per 1M tokens (blended) · Lower is better

Intelligence Evaluations

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

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.

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-Banking

Agentic tool use

Terminal-Bench v2.1

Agentic coding & terminal use

SciCode

Coding

Humanity's Last Exam

Reasoning & knowledge

GPQA Diamond

Scientific reasoning

CritPt

Physics reasoning

AA-Omniscience Accuracy

Knowledge

AA-Omniscience Non-Hallucination Rate

1 - hallucination rate

AA-LCR

Long context reasoning

AA-Briefcase

Agentic knowledge work, Elo

AutomationBench-AA

Agentic SaaS workflows

No data available
Harvey LAB-AA

Legal agentic work, criterion pass rate

EnterpriseOps-Gym-AA

Agentic business operations

AA-AnalystAgentNew

Quantitative analysis on spreadsheets & documents

No data available
IFBench

Instruction following

APEX-Agents-AA

Long-horizon agentic tasks

No data available
ITBench-AA

Kubernetes incident root-cause analysis

MMMU-Pro

Visual reasoning

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.

Intelligence Index vs. Price

Blended at 7:2:1 (cache-input-output) · USD per 1M tokens (blended)
Most attractive quadrant

While higher intelligence models are typically more expensive, they do not all follow the same price-quality curve.

Context Window

Context Window

Context window: tokens limit · Higher is better

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).

Pricing

Intelligence Index vs. Price

Blended at 7:2:1 (cache-input-output) · USD per 1M tokens (blended)
Most attractive quadrant

While higher intelligence models are typically more expensive, they do not all follow the same price-quality curve.

Performance Summary

Output Speed vs. Price

Output speed: output tokens per second · USD per 1M tokens (blended)
Most attractive quadrant

Tokens per second received while the model is generating tokens (ie. after first chunk has been received from the API for models which support streaming).

Price per token, shown in USD per million tokens. Price is a blend of cache hit, input, and output token prices using the selected ratio (default 7:2:1 cache-input-output).

Speed

Measured by Output Speed (tokens per second)

Output Speed

Output tokens per second · Higher is better

Tokens per second received while the model is generating tokens (ie. after first chunk has been received from the API for models which support streaming).

Figures represent performance of the model's first-party API (e.g. OpenAI for o1) or the median across providers where a first-party API is not available (e.g. Meta's Llama models).

Latency

Measured by Time (seconds) to First Token

Latency: Time To First Answer Token

Seconds to first answer token received · Accounts for reasoning model 'thinking' time

Time to first answer token received, in seconds, after API request sent. For reasoning models, this includes the 'thinking' time of the model before providing an answer. For models which do not support streaming, this represents time to receive the completion.

End-to-End Response Time

Seconds to output 500 tokens, calculated based on time to first token, 'thinking' time for reasoning models, and output speed

End-to-End Response Time vs. Price

End-to-end response time: end-to-end seconds to output 500 tokens · USD per 1M tokens (blended)
Most attractive quadrant

Price per token, shown in USD per million tokens. Price is a blend of cache hit, input, and output token prices using the selected ratio (default 7:2:1 cache-input-output).

Further Analysis
NVIDIA logo
Nemotron 3 Ultra
262k
Open
38
$0.25
--
--
--
--
Model
Provider
Google logo
Gemma 4 31B
131k
Open
30
$0.04
147
0.76
15.99
11.83
Model
Provider
OpenAI logo
gpt-oss-20b (high)
128k
Open
15
$0.02
--
--
--
--
Model
Provider
OpenAI logo
gpt-oss-20b (low)
128k
Open
14*
--
--
--
--
--
Model
Provider

Key definitions

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about Lightning AI

Lightning AI offers 1 model that we track: Gemma 4 31B.

The most intelligent model available on Lightning AI is Gemma 4 31B with an Intelligence Index score of 30.

The fastest model on Lightning AI by output speed is Gemma 4 31B at 146.8 tokens per second.

The model with the lowest time to first answer token on Lightning AI is Gemma 4 31B at 12.58s. Lower latency means faster initial response time.

The most affordable model on Lightning AI by blended price is Gemma 4 31B at $0.17 per 1M tokens (7:2:1 cache hit/input/output ratio).

Yes, Lightning AI offers an OpenAI-compatible API, making it easy to switch from OpenAI or use existing OpenAI SDK integrations.

Yes, all 1 models on Lightning AI support JSON mode for structured output.

Yes, all 1 models on Lightning AI support function calling (tool use).

Yes, Lightning AI offers 1 reasoning model: Gemma 4 31B. Reasoning models use extended thinking to work through complex problems before providing an answer.

Yes, all 1 models on Lightning AI are open weight models.

Yes, provider performance can vary over time due to infrastructure changes, load balancing, and updates. We continuously benchmark all providers and display historical performance trends in the "Over Time" charts.

When choosing a model on Lightning AI, consider: intelligence (for quality-sensitive tasks), output speed (for throughput-intensive tasks), latency (for interactive applications requiring quick first responses), pricing (for cost-sensitive workloads), and features like context window size, JSON mode, or function calling support.