Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 12.9 to 10.4, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 2.7x less per output token ($0.147 vs $0.40 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; 6 benchmarks have a result for both.
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: which to pick
Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has a coding score, 22.6 on the Vibe Coding Index; Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite for a larger context window (1.05M against 262K tokens) and work measured by CorpFin (Vals AI) or MedScribe (Vals AI), where it leads.
- Shared results
- 6
- Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite only
- 24
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning only
- 14
- Like-for-like categories
- 4 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads, 12.9 against 10.4.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has a AA Agentic Index result, 3.5.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite has a GPQA Diamond result, 70.2%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite has a AIME result, 42.1%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite has a MMLU Pro result, 79.1%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite takes 1.05M tokens against 262K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite $0.0003, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning $0.0001 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has the number, $0.06.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite not benchmarked, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 22.6 from 2 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- General, 38.1 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- MedScribe (Vals AI): Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite 75.8% against Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 4.3%, 71.5 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite $0.40 against Nemotron 3.5 Lightning $0.147 per million output tokens, 2.7x apart.
- Context window
- Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite takes 1.05M tokens, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 262K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Bars | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence | 0 | 1 | ||
| Reasoning | 0 | 2 | ||
| Knowledge | 1 | 0 | ||
| General | 1 | 1 | ||
| All shared boards | 2 | 4 |
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index12 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Coding Index | Not measured | 26.8 | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 71.4% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | Not measured | 52.8% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | Not measured | 3.0% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 10.9% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 29.5% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 59.3% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| SciCode | Not measured | 32.1% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 4.5% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| ALE-Bench | Not measured | 769.2 | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 27 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 10.4 | 12.9 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.8 | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | Not measured | 3.5 | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | Not measured | 18.5% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 2.6% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 2.9% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | Not measured | 17.0% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 19.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) | 36.9% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 34 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 70.2% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 75.4% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 62.5% | 74.3% | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 6.8% | 10.6% | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 40.5% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 17 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index4 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 42.1% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | 89.5% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| AA Math Index | 53.3 | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 53.3% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 79.1% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 82.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 57.6% | 54.2% | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 66.2% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 57.6% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 88.9% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 34.2% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 75.9% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
Web designNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 9 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 30.8% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 75.8% | 4.3% | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite |
| IFBench | 49.9% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 55.7% | 60.3% | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
| DTBench | 62.8% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| LMCA | 18.1% | Not measured | Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 40 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | NVIDIA | |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | July 22, 2025 | August 11, 2026 |
| Context window | 1.05M | 262K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.10 | $0.0534 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.40 | $0.147 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | 22.6 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 2 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | $0.06 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for coding?
Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has a coding score, 22.6 on the Vibe Coding Index; Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite for a larger context window (1.05M against 262K tokens) and work measured by CorpFin (Vals AI) or MedScribe (Vals AI), where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite costs $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens; Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs $0.0534 and $0.147. Cost per solved task is known for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning only.
Which has the bigger context window, Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks is the Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning comparison based on?
6 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.