Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
$0.07 per 1M input tokens and $0.20 per 1M output tokens · 262K context · tools, reasoning, JSON, open weights.
Prices checked Oct 21, 2026 · tracked by LLM Cost Index since Oct 21, 2026
What Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs per month
Estimated monthly bill for typical workloads, using the cached-input price for repeated context. Try your own numbers in the cost calculator.
| Workload | Per month |
|---|---|
| Customer chatbot 1,000 conversations a day, 8 turns each | $35.52 |
| Document Q&A (RAG) 500 questions a day over retrieved documents | $7.53 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 200 tasks a day, long tool-heavy contexts | $21.90 |
| Content generation 30 long articles a day | $0.639 |
| Classification / extraction 100,000 short items a day | $72.00 |
Price history
We started tracking Nemotron 3.5 Lightning on Oct 21, 2026; the chart appears as soon as there is a second data point. See all recent price changes.
Where to run Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 4 providers
Darkbloom is the cheapest at $0.025 input / $0.12 output per 1M tokens. Uptime is the average over the last 30 days as reported by OpenRouter; see provider reliability.
Cheaper alternatives to Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Models with the same tool calling, structured output for at least 20% less (3:1 input/output mix), most capable first.
| Model | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Context | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GLM 5.3 Flash Z.ai | $0.041 | $0.12 | 1.05M | visiontoolsreasoningJSONopen weights |
| Ling 3.0 Flash inclusionAI | $0.021 | $0.063 | 262K | toolsreasoningJSONopen weights |
| Mercury 2.5 Inception | $0.04 | $0.15 | 260K | toolsreasoningJSON |
| gpt-oss-20b OpenAI | $0.018 | $0.09 | 131K | toolsreasoningJSONopen weights |
| Llama 3.1 8B Instruct Meta Llama | $0.05 | $0.08 | 131K | toolsJSONopen weights |
How to pay less for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
For a customer chatbot (1,000 conversations a day, 8 turns each) that costs $42.00 a month at list price without caching:
| Option | Per month | You save |
|---|---|---|
| Move to GLM 5.3 Flash (similar capabilities) | $16.82 | $25.18 (60%) |
| Route to Darkbloom | $19.08 | $22.92 (55%) |
| Use prompt caching (60% of input cached) | $35.52 | $6.48 (15%) |
Other workloads: cut-your-bill tool for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning.
Specifications
| Model ID | nvidia/nemotron-3.5-lightning |
| Input | text |
| Output | text |
| Tool calling | Yes |
| Structured output | Yes |
| Reasoning mode | Yes |
| Open weights | Yes — nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3.5-Lightning-30B-A3B-BF16 |
| Released | Aug 11, 2026 |
FAQ
- How much does Nemotron 3.5 Lightning cost?
- $0.07 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens; cached input costs $0.04 per million. Prices as of Oct 21, 2026.
- What is the context window of Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
- 262K tokens, with up to 236K output tokens per response.
- Does Nemotron 3.5 Lightning support images, tools and structured output?
- Images as input: no. Tool calling: yes. Structured (JSON) output: yes. Reasoning mode: yes.
- What are cheaper alternatives to Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
- Models with the same key capabilities for at least 20% less include GLM 5.3 Flash ($0.041 / $0.12), Ling 3.0 Flash ($0.021 / $0.063), Mercury 2.5 ($0.04 / $0.15).
More from NVIDIA: all NVIDIA models · how we collect prices