LOADING DATASHEET
GROUNDED IN REAL HUMAN CONVERSATIONSYOUR BENCH
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
◆ OPEN
by Nvidia
OPEN WEIGHTSLOCALCODING HELPFAST ANSWERSLONG DOCUMENTS
RANKED #39 OF 232 ASSISTANTS · OVERALL #65 OF 6,567 · VIBE SCORE 6.5 · 300 VOICES
A fast text model from Nvidia built for coding help and handling long documents.
HAPPY9.6
83 mentions
SAD5.4
10 mentions
VIBE TRAJECTORY
26 weeks · 701 voices
HOLDING UP
Recent vibe is steady. No clear fade in the crowd.
HOW TO USE IT
Open weights. You can use a hosted service, or download it and run it yourself, free.
RUN IT ON YOUR OWN MACHINE
Open weights: download Nemotron 3.5 Lightning once and it's yours. No subscription, no rate limits, works offline.
30B parameters (3B active MoE), a Q4 file is about 25 GB
- BARE MINIMUM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB (Used)
24 GB VRAM
~$700 USEDQ4_K_M, ~30 tok/s, 8k context
- SWEET SPOT
MacBook Pro M3 Max (64GB Unified Memory)
64 GB UNIFIED MEMORY
~$2,800 REFURBISHEDQ8_0, ~80 tok/s, 64k context
- FULL POWER
Mac Studio M2 Ultra (128GB Unified Memory)
128 GB UNIFIED MEMORY
~$3,900 REFURBISHEDFull BF16 precision, ~50 tok/s, up to 256k context
LEARN HOW TO SET IT UP
WILL MY BOX RUN NEMOTRON 3.5 LIGHTNING?
The three cards above are researched picks. Search the machine you actually have — we only say yes if it should reply at a usable speed, not just load the weights and crawl.
HARDWARE PICKS & PRICES ARE RESEARCHED FROM THE LIVE WEB AND REFRESHED AUTOMATICALLY. TREAT THEM AS BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT CAN YOU ACTUALLY DO WITH IT?
Everyday jobs on each of those rigs: how long Nemotron 3.5 Lightning takes, and how good the crowd says it is at that kind of work.
| THE JOB | BARE MINIMUMNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB (Used) | SWEET SPOTMacBook Pro M3 Max (64GB Unified Memory) | FULL POWERMac Studio M2 Ultra (128GB Unified Memory) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write an emaila paragraph or two, drafted from a one-line brief | ~17 S★★★★★ | ~6 S★★★★★ | ~10 S★★★★★ |
| Summarize a documenta long report boiled down to the points that matter | ~50 S★★★★★ | ~19 S★★★★★ | ~30 S★★★★★ |
| Build a websitea small landing page, markup and styles together | ~4.4 MIN★★★★★ | ~1.7 MIN★★★★★ | ~2.7 MIN★★★★★ |
| Build a backendan API with routes, storage and tests | ~14 MIN★★★★★ | ~5.2 MIN★★★★★ | ~8.3 MIN★★★★★ |
| Build a gamea playable browser game in one file | ~8.3 MIN★★★★★ | ~3.1 MIN★★★★★ | ~5 MIN★★★★★ |
STARS ARE THE COMMUNITY SCORE FOR THAT KIND OF WORK, DOCKED FOR HOW SQUASHED THE WEIGHTS GET AT EACH TIER. TIMES ARE COMPUTED FROM RESEARCHED SPEEDS. BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT THE INTERNET SAYS
People like Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for its fast and accurate responses, especially when handling code and long chats. However, some users run into frustrating outages, errors, and usage limits.
267 POSTS · 33 COMMENTS · REDDIT · BLUESKY · HACKER NEWS · X · LEMMY · GITHUB · DEV.TO · DEV FORUMS · BLOG
PEOPLE LOVE
- Popular for coding help (11 mentions)
- Answers come back fast (8 mentions)
- Usually gives correct answers (5 mentions)
- Keeps up in long chats and big documents (3 mentions)
PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT
- Outages, errors, or limits get in the way (3 mentions)
- People find it expensive (2 mentions)
TOPIC BY TOPIC
- Help with codePEOPLE LOVE THIS
11 thumbs up · 0 thumbs down
- SpeedPEOPLE LOVE THIS
8 thumbs up · 0 thumbs down
- Getting facts rightPEOPLE LOVE THIS
5 thumbs up · 1 thumbs down
- Long conversationsMOSTLY POSITIVE
3 thumbs up · 2 thumbs down
- PriceMIXED FEELINGS
2 thumbs up · 2 thumbs down
- Working when you need itA SORE SPOT
0 thumbs up · 3 thumbs down
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
- FROM BLOG >
“This release follows Nemotron 3 Nano and reflects NVIDIA’s commitment to continually improving open models for greater accuracy and speed.”
LOOKING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE?
Checked picks first: tags say why you would switch, stars say how fully each one stands in for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning.
DeepSeek V4 Flash
Phi 4 Mini
Grok 4.6
Qwen3.8 27B> SOURCES (12)
- REDDIT · 2026-08-11 · 566 UPVOTESnvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3.5-Lightning-30B-A3B-BF16 · Hugging Face
nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3.5-Lightning-30B-A3B-BF16 · Hugging Face
- HACKER NEWS · 2026-08-11 · 239 UPVOTESNvidia Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and NeMo Switchyard
Nvidia Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and NeMo Switchyard
- X · 2026-08-14 · 209 UPVOTESWhat a week for AI looks like Muse Glimmer 30b Nemotron 3.5 Lightning Grok Bot Grok 4.6 Qwen 3.8-Max weights GLM-5.3 Qwe
What a week for AI looks like Muse Glimmer 30b Nemotron 3.5 Lightning Grok Bot Grok 4.6 Qwen 3.8-Max weights GLM-5.3 Qwe
- X · 2026-08-12 · 198 UPVOTES2-bit NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning ran tool calls nonstop for 10 minutes on just 22GB of VRAM. 🤯 It cited 80+ websites
2-bit NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning ran tool calls nonstop for 10 minutes on just 22GB of VRAM. 🤯 It cited 80+ websites
- X · 2026-08-14 · 185 UPVOTESWhat a golden age we’re living in. Grok 4.6 Qwen 3.8-Max Open Gemini 3.7 Flash Muse Glimmer 30B DeepSeek V4 Pro GLM-5.3
What a golden age we’re living in. Grok 4.6 Qwen 3.8-Max Open Gemini 3.7 Flash Muse Glimmer 30B DeepSeek V4 Pro GLM-5.3
- X · 2026-08-14 · 123 UPVOTESWhat is happening right now is genuinely insane. Seven frontier AI models. Five days. 🤯 → Grok 4.6 : Fable 5 level inte
What is happening right now is genuinely insane. Seven frontier AI models. Five days. 🤯 → Grok 4.6 : Fable 5 level inte
- HACKER NEWS · 2026-08-11 · 119 UPVOTESNvidia Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nvidia Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
- X · 2026-08-12 · 104 UPVOTESLove seeing our partners post-training Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for their own domains, tools, and workflows, as well as th
Love seeing our partners post-training Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for their own domains, tools, and workflows, as well as th
- BLUESKY · 2026-08-14 · 102 UPVOTESIt's been a busy week so far. ✅ Aug 14, Qwen3.8-27B ✅ Aug 14, GLM 5.3 ✅ Aug 13, dots3-note preview ✅ Aug 13, Gemini 3.7
It's been a busy week so far. ✅ Aug 14, Qwen3.8-27B ✅ Aug 14, GLM 5.3 ✅ Aug 13, dots3-note preview ✅ Aug 13, Gemini 3.7
- REDDIT · 2026-08-11 · 101 UPVOTESnvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3.5-Lightning-30B-A3B-BF16
nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3.5-Lightning-30B-A3B-BF16
- X · 2026-08-13 · 96 UPVOTES⏳ Aug 14, Qwen3.8-27B ✅ Aug 13, Gemini 3.7 Flash ✅ Aug 13, DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 ✅ Aug 12, Grok 4.6 ✅ Aug 11, Nemotron 3.
⏳ Aug 14, Qwen3.8-27B ✅ Aug 13, Gemini 3.7 Flash ✅ Aug 13, DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 ✅ Aug 12, Grok 4.6 ✅ Aug 11, Nemotron 3.
- X · 2026-08-14 · 56 UPVOTESWhich's next? Claude? GPT? MiniMax? MiMo? Hy? Step? ✅ Aug 14, Qwen3.8-27B ✅ Aug 14, GLM 5.3 ✅ Aug 13, Gemini 3.7 Flash ✅
Which's next? Claude? GPT? MiniMax? MiMo? Hy? Step? ✅ Aug 14, Qwen3.8-27B ✅ Aug 14, GLM 5.3 ✅ Aug 13, Gemini 3.7 Flash ✅