Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
As of August 20, 2026, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is 91% cheaper on blended LLM API pricing. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) costs $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens ($0.25 blended 1M-in + 1M-out). Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) costs $0.50 / $2.20 per million tokens ($2.70 blended). Sources: https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models and https://build.nvidia.com. The cheapest LLM for your app still depends on how many output tokens you generate.
How much does Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) cost per million tokens?
Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) OpenRouter API pricing is $0.50 input and $2.20 output per million tokens via OpenRouter. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) NVIDIA API pricing is $0.05 input and $0.20 output per million tokens via NVIDIA. Use those four numbers, not ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription prices, when you are comparing APIs.
Which is better for coding, Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) leads on SWE-bench Verified: Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) at 70.7% vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) at 51.6%. SWE-bench measures real GitHub fixes; LiveCodeBench measures contest programming.
What is the context window for Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) supports a 1M token context window, while Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) supports 262K tokens. Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) offers a larger context window. Filling a larger window bills more input tokens, so the cheaper-per-million model can still cost more on long documents.
Which model performs better on benchmarks, Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) leads on 12 of 12 shared benchmarks versus Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)'s 0 wins. Check the comparison table for GPQA Diamond, SWE-bench, MMLU, HLE, and the other evals we track. Token price and benchmark score together are the usual LLM comparison, not either number alone.
Is Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) better for production use?
Both Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) are production API models. For cost-sensitive production traffic, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) has better economics on the blended 1M-in + 1M-out scale. For maximum capability, weight the benchmark table for your domain. Many production stacks route cheap models for drafts and a frontier model for the hard turn, which is usually cheaper than sending everything to the expensive API.
Can I switch between Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) in my app?
Yes. Call Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) through OpenRouter and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) through NVIDIA with separate API keys, or through a gateway that already wraps both. Keep prompts in tokens, not characters, when you estimate the invoice. AnotherWrapper templates can swap providers without rewriting auth and billing.
How accurate is this Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) pricing data?
List rates are the latest published OpenRouter API pricing and NVIDIA API pricing, quoted per million tokens. Official rate sheets: https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models and https://build.nvidia.com. Prompt caching, batch APIs, and committed-use discounts can change the invoice. Benchmark scores are from official publications and independent evals, updated as new numbers land.
What is the output token limit for Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) supports up to an unspecified number of output tokens per request, while Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) supports up to 262K output tokens. Output tokens are usually the expensive half of API pricing, so a higher max output cap is a capability, not a discount.
Which model has better throughput, Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
Neither Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) nor Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) has published throughput data on this page yet. Throughput (tokens per second) and time-to-first-token are why two models with the same per-million-token price can still feel different in chat and agents.
How do I switch the models in this Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) comparison?
Use the model pickers at the top of this LLM comparison. Search any model in the index and the URL updates. Open Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B A55B) or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) from the sidebar for the single-model API pricing page, or go back to the LLM pricing table to sort by cheapest blended cost.
