Gemma 4 31B vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Gemma 4 31B leads Nemotron 3.5 Lightning on coding, 39.0 to 22.6 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 2.7x less per output token ($0.147 vs $0.40 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 8 benchmarks have a result for both.
Gemma 4 31B or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: which to pick
Pick Gemma 4 31B for coding: it scores 39.0 on the Vibe Coding Index against 22.6 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning.
Pick Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for output tokens 2.7x cheaper ($0.147 vs $0.40 per million).
- Shared results
- 8
- Gemma 4 31B only
- 63
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning only
- 12
- Like-for-like categories
- 5 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
Gemma 4 31B
Gemma 4 31B scores 39.0 against 22.6.
2 benchmarks behind each score
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Gemma 4 31B
Gemma 4 31B leads, 14.7 against 12.9.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
Gemma 4 31B
Gemma 4 31B leads, 4.2 against 3.5.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
No call
Both take 262K tokens.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Gemma 4 31B $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
- Gemma 4 31B 39.0 from 2 benchmarks, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 22.6 from 2 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Reasoning, 12.2 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- AA Coding Index: Gemma 4 31B 43.4 against Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 26.8, 16.6 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Gemma 4 31B $0.40 against Nemotron 3.5 Lightning $0.147 per million output tokens, 2.7x apart.
- Context window
- Both take 262K tokens.
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 | Gemma 4 31B | Bars | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 3 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| General | 1 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 8 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index30
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 31B | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 49.0% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1367 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| AA Coding Index | 43.4 | 26.8 | Gemma 4 31B |
| 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 |
| SciCode | 45.5% | 32.1% | Gemma 4 31B |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 36.4% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| WeirdML | 52.3% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| ALE-Bench | 925.5 | 769.2 | Gemma 4 31B |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1459 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1463 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1359 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1380 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| SciCode | 8.9% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 21 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 31B | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 14.7 | 12.9 | Gemma 4 31B |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 143.0 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 31B | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 4.2 | 3.5 | Gemma 4 31B |
| LiveBench research | 44.4% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LiveBench browser | 4.0% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 13.3% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B 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 | 65.5% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 32 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 31B | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench reasoning | 68.3% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 85.7% | 74.3% | Gemma 4 31B |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 23.6% | 10.6% | Gemma 4 31B |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 75.8% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1448 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1464 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1456 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1283 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1310 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 63.5% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index3 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 31B | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | 73.3% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1463 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1465 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 31B | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 52.6% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 54.2% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 61.4% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 10.4% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1457 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1451 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1438 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1430 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| FACTS Benchmark Suite | 45.3% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index1 board, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 31B | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench design | 58.4% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 8 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 31B | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench data analysis | 53.3% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 55.0% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 4.3% | Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning measured |
| IFBench | 75.6% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 69.7% | 60.3% | Gemma 4 31B |
| DTBench | 82.7% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMCA | 39.3% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 30.6% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text | 1443 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1433 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1417 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Vision | 1276 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1451 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1430 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1475 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1436 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1442 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1460 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1433 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1452 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1446 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1432 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1405 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1271 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1326 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1282 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1280 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Vision: captioning | 1218 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1226 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1285 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| LMArena Document | 1425 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 31B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 15 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 31B | 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 Gemma 4 31B | NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | NVIDIA | |
| Weights | Open weights | Open weights |
| Released | April 2, 2026 | August 11, 2026 |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.14 | $0.0534 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.40 | $0.147 |
| Coding index | 39.0 | 22.6 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 2 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | $0.06 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Gemma 4 31B better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for coding?
Pick Gemma 4 31B for coding: it scores 39.0 on the Vibe Coding Index against 22.6 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning. Pick Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for output tokens 2.7x cheaper ($0.147 vs $0.40 per million).
Which is cheaper, Gemma 4 31B or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Gemma 4 31B costs $0.14 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, Gemma 4 31B or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Neither: both take 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks is the Gemma 4 31B vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning comparison based on?
8 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Gemma 4 31B's coding index rests on 2 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.