Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B): Specs & Benchmark Comparison
Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) both come from NVIDIA, Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) was released in June 2026, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) followed 2 months later in August 2026. Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) is the larger model at roughly 550 billion parameters, against 30 billion for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B).
The two models share 12 published benchmarks. Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) leads on 12 of them. The widest gaps are on OmniScience, where Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) scores 78.7% against 17.5%; Terminal-Bench 2.1, where Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) scores 56.4% against 24.6%. Averaged across everything we track, Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) sits at 64.8% and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) at 45.3%.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is available through an API at $0.05 per million input tokens with a 262K-token context window. We do not track a hosted API for Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B), so pricing and context cannot be compared directly.
| Characteristic | Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) |
|---|---|---|
| Company | NVIDIA | NVIDIA |
| Release Date | June 4, 2026 | August 11, 2026 |
| Parameters | 550B | 30B |
| Multimodal | No | No |
| Context (input) | — | 262K |
| Context (output) | — | 262K |
| Input Price / 1M | — | $0.05 |
| Output Price / 1M | — | $0.20 |
| Average Score | 64.8% | 45.3% |
| Benchmarks | ||
| OmniScience | 78.7% | 17.5% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 56.4% | 24.6% |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 67.7% | 39.3% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 37.4% | 11.7% |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 70.7% | 51.6% |
| AA-LCR | 65.4% | 52.0% |
| GPQA | 87.0% | 75.0% |
| SciCode | 44.6% | 32.6% |
| IFBench | 81.7% | 72.0% |
| BrowseComp | 44.4% | 37.0% |
| PinchBench | 90.0% | 85.0% |
| MMLU-Pro | 86.8% | 82.0% |
Visual Benchmark Comparison
Verdict
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) leads in 1 out of 3 comparison categories.
Both models show comparable average scores: Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) — 0.6, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5.
On SWE-Bench, both models are nearly equal: Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) — 0.7, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is newer: released 8/11/2026 vs 6/4/2026.
More About These Models
Related Comparisons
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
Which model is cheaper — Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
Which has a larger context window — Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
The Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) 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 Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.