GPT-5.1 Medium vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B): Specs & Benchmark Comparison
GPT-5.1 Medium is developed by OpenAI, while Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) comes from NVIDIA. GPT-5.1 Medium was released in November 2025, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) followed 9 months later in August 2026. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) has a published size of about 30 billion parameters; OpenAI has not disclosed the parameter count of GPT-5.1 Medium.
We have 1 benchmark result for GPT-5.1 Medium and 13 benchmark results for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B), but they were measured on different benchmarks, so there is no like-for-like scoreboard.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is the cheaper API at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens, roughly 20 times cheaper than GPT-5.1 Medium at $1 and $4. Both accept a context window of about 256K tokens. GPT-5.1 Medium accepts text and images as input, while Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) accepts text.
| Characteristic | GPT-5.1 Medium | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) |
|---|---|---|
| Company | OpenAI | NVIDIA |
| Release Date | November 11, 2025 | August 11, 2026 |
| Parameters | — | 30B |
| Multimodal | Yes | No |
| Context (input) | 256K | 262K |
| Context (output) | 64K | 262K |
| Input Price / 1M | $1.00 | $0.05 |
| Output Price / 1M | $4.00 | $0.20 |
| Average Score | 98.0% | 45.3% |
Verdict
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) leads in 3 out of 4 comparison categories.
Both models show comparable average scores: GPT-5.1 Medium — 1.0, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is 20.0x cheaper: input $0.05/1M vs $1.00/1M tokens.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) supports a larger context: 262K vs 256K tokens.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is newer: released 8/11/2026 vs 11/11/2025.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — GPT-5.1 Medium or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
Which model is cheaper — GPT-5.1 Medium or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
Which has a larger context window — GPT-5.1 Medium or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
The GPT-5.1 Medium and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) comparison is updated for 2026. Data includes benchmark results, API pricing, context window size and other specifications. For more detailed information, visit the GPT-5.1 Medium or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.