Instruction following
Like-for-like- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- 68.5
- #67/124
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- 71.0
- #64/124
- Basis
- Provisional lane · 1 vs 1 weighted rows
- Reading
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 vs Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
Decision reading
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B has the higher public score, 50.78 versus 20.46, and the 90% score intervals do not overlap.
4 results are shared. Category rows resting on Estimated evidence or different benchmark sets are marked directional and do not name a winner.
NVIDIA
20.46/100
Estimated · Public rank #239
90% interval 10.6–30.3
Updated September 18, 2026. Rank says Ternary Bonsai 2 27B is ahead. Price, access, and your workload can each overturn that. Public scores include evidence status and uncertainty.
Both of these models will change. Get the price, version and retirement notices for the pair, each with its source. Follow model changes
Share or export
Which one for your work
Recommendations appear only when a shared evidence basis or an explicit operating constraint supports the call. Secondary and unsupported use cases stay disclosed below the initial list.
Long documents
Prompts that approach the documented context limit
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 has the larger documented context window.
Confidence: documented
Show secondary and unsupported calls
Coding work
Code generation, repair, and software-engineering tasks
Not enough matched evidence
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 and Ternary Bonsai 2 27B are scored on Estimated evidence for coding, so the reading is directional rather than like-for-like.
Confidence: limited
Agentic work
Tool use, computer use, and multi-step task completion
Not enough matched evidence
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 and Ternary Bonsai 2 27B are scored on Estimated evidence for agentic, so the reading is directional rather than like-for-like.
Confidence: limited
Chat turn cost
1K fresh input + 500 output tokens
Not enough matched evidence
A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
Confidence: listed-rates
Cache-heavy agent loop cost
200K cached + 20K fresh input + 10K output tokens
Not enough matched evidence
A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
Confidence: listed-rates
Repository review cost
50K fresh input + 3K output tokens
Not enough matched evidence
A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
Confidence: listed-rates
What is actually comparable
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results present for only one model describe coverage, not superiority.
9 Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 only
4 Shared
17 Ternary Bonsai 2 27B only
- Shared results
- 4
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 only
- 9
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B only
- 17
- Like-for-like categories
- 1 / 8
3 categories rest on Estimated evidence or different evidence sets. Those rows remain visible for coverage context but do not name a winner.
Category results, on a stated basis
Each row shows the public-lane category score for both models: the BenchAlign lane for agentic, coding, and knowledge, and the weighted public rows elsewhere, with the same rank each model page reports. A row is like-for-like only when both scores rest on Supported evidence or the same weighted set. Directional and not-comparable rows remain visible, but they never receive a winner.
Agentic
Directional only- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- 25.7
- Estimated · #150/154
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- 49.9
- Estimated · #59/154
- Basis
- BenchAlign lane · 4 vs 3 public rows
- Reading
- Directional only
Coding
Directional only- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- 30.1
- Estimated · #143/154
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- 49.9
- Estimated · #64/154
- Basis
- BenchAlign lane · 4 vs 4 public rows
- Reading
- Directional only
Knowledge
Directional only- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- 30.0
- Estimated · #179/184
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- 50.6
- Estimated · #78/184
- Basis
- BenchAlign lane · 4 vs 3 public rows
- Reading
- Directional only
Reasoning
Not comparable- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- 54.8
- Unranked · 1 rankable row
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- 73.9
- Unranked · 1 rankable row
- Basis
- Provisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows
- Reading
- Not comparable
Math
Not comparable- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- Not ranked
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- 76.8
- Unranked · 4 rankable rows
- Basis
- Provisional lane · 0 vs 1 weighted rows
- Reading
- Not comparable
Multilingual
Not comparable- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- Not ranked
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- Not ranked
- Basis
- Provisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows
- Reading
- Not comparable
Multimodal
Not comparable- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- Not ranked
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- Not ranked
- Basis
- Provisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows
- Reading
- Not comparable
| Category | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B | Basis | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instruction following | 68.5#67/124 | 71.0#64/124 | Like-for-likeProvisional lane · 1 vs 1 weighted rows | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B leads |
| Agentic | 25.7Estimated · #150/154 | 49.9Estimated · #59/154 | Directional onlyBenchAlign lane · 4 vs 3 public rows | Directional only |
| Coding | 30.1Estimated · #143/154 | 49.9Estimated · #64/154 | Directional onlyBenchAlign lane · 4 vs 4 public rows | Directional only |
| Knowledge | 30.0Estimated · #179/184 | 50.6Estimated · #78/184 | Directional onlyBenchAlign lane · 4 vs 3 public rows | Directional only |
| Reasoning | 54.8Unranked · 1 rankable row | 73.9Unranked · 1 rankable row | Not comparableProvisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows | Not comparable |
| Math | Not ranked | 76.8Unranked · 4 rankable rows | Not comparableProvisional lane · 0 vs 1 weighted rows | Not comparable |
| Multilingual | Not ranked | Not ranked | Not comparableProvisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows | Not comparable |
| Multimodal | Not ranked | Not ranked | Not comparableProvisional lane · 0 vs 0 weighted rows | Not comparable |
Ranks count the models scored in each category’s lane, so the agentic, coding, and knowledge denominators (BenchAlign) differ from the provisional-lane categories. Unranked scores sit on the lane’s scale but never name a winner. Like-for-like rows within 0.5 points read as a practical tie.
Shape of the matched evidence
Only shared public evidence is shown. Sparse evidence stays a ruled list rather than being closed into a radar shape.
Too few matched category axes support a radar. The ruled list below shows only shared benchmark results; positions use each benchmark’s normalized display scale when available.
GPQA
Knowledge
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4: 75.6%Ternary Bonsai 2 27B: 85.8%Normalized gap 10.2Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 source Ternary Bonsai 2 27B sourceSWE-bench Verified
Coding
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4: 52.8%Ternary Bonsai 2 27B: 60.8%Normalized gap 8.0Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 source Ternary Bonsai 2 27B sourceIFBench
Instruction following
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4: 72.9%Ternary Bonsai 2 27B: 74%Normalized gap 1.1Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 source Ternary Bonsai 2 27B source
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes turn per-token rates into comparable decisions. Each scenario states context fit and whether cached input had to fall back to the published list-input rate.
Chat turn
1K fresh input + 500 output tokens
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- Self-hosted; infrastructure cost varies
- Fits in one request
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- Self-hosted; infrastructure cost varies
- Fits in one request
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 has no comparable published API token rate. Ternary Bonsai 2 27B has no comparable published API token rate.
Repository review
50K fresh input + 3K output tokens
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- Self-hosted; infrastructure cost varies
- Fits in one request
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- Self-hosted; infrastructure cost varies
- Fits in one request
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 has no comparable published API token rate. Ternary Bonsai 2 27B has no comparable published API token rate.
Cache-heavy agent loop
200K cached + 20K fresh input + 10K output tokens
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
- Self-hosted; infrastructure cost varies
- Fits in one request
- Cached-input rate unavailable
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
- Self-hosted; infrastructure cost varies
- Fits in one request
- Cached-input rate unavailable
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 has no comparable published API token rate. Ternary Bonsai 2 27B has no comparable published API token rate.
Specification differences
Sourced differences are shown directly. Missing facts stay explicit instead of being inferred from a model name or family.
SpecificationNemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
Context window
Maximum documented context; output-token limits may be lower.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
API model ID
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
Not sourced
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
prism-ml/Ternary-Bonsai-2-27B-gguf
PrismML Bonsai 2 collectionCached-input rate
A missing cached-input rate falls back to the listed input rate only in the stated workload estimate.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
No comparable hosted API rate
NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning model cardTernary Bonsai 2 27B
No comparable hosted API rate
PrismML Bonsai 2 collectionDocumented inputs
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
Not sourced
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
Not sourced
Documented outputs
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
Not sourced
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
Not sourced
Provider availability
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
Not sourced
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
Not sourced
Reasoning profile
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
Reasoning
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
Reasoning
Weight access
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
Open Weight
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
Open Weight
License
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
Open Weight
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
Open Weight
Release date
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4
2026-08-11
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B
2026-09-17
If you already use one of these models
- Deployment change
- The models list different providers, so authentication, endpoint behavior, limits, and feature support may change.
- Quality signal
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B has the higher public score, 50.78 versus 20.46, and the 90% score intervals do not overlap.
- Workload cost
- A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
- Context tradeoff
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 has the larger documented window (1M).
Run the same representative tasks against both endpoints before changing production traffic.
Benchmark evidence
The full public result ledger is available for audit without forcing a wide desktop table onto a phone.
Browse raw public benchmark evidence30 rows
Agentic
Terminal-Bench 2.0
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP423.5%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B—Not directly comparable
PinchBench
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP483.4%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B—Not directly comparable
BrowseComp
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP436.8%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B—Not directly comparable
τ³-bench results
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP49.5%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B—Not directly comparable
τ²-bench results
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B80.2%SourceNot directly comparable
BFCL v3
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B74.9%SourceNot directly comparable
Terminal-Bench 2.1
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B52.8%SourceNot directly comparable
Coding
SWE-bench Verified
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP452.8%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B60.8%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B leads this result
SWE Multilingual
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP436.5%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B—Not directly comparable
Terminal-Bench 2.0
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP423.5%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B—Not directly comparable
SciCode
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP431.4%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B—Not directly comparable
LiveCodeBench v6
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B90.1%SourceNot directly comparable
BigCodeBench
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B58.1%SourceNot directly comparable
Terminal-Bench 2.1
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B52.8%SourceNot directly comparable
Knowledge
GPQA
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP475.6%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B85.8%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B leads this result
GPQA-D
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP475.6%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B85.8%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B leads this result
HLE w/o tools
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP410.5%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B—Not directly comparable
MMLU-Pro
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP481.6%SourceTernary Bonsai 2 27B—Not directly comparable
MMLU-Redux
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B89.1%SourceNot directly comparable
Math
GSM8K
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B96.7%SourceNot directly comparable
MATH-500
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B98.8%SourceNot directly comparable
AIME 2025
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B95%SourceNot directly comparable
AIME26
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B95.8%SourceNot directly comparable
Multimodal
CharXiv (overall)
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B80.0%SourceNot directly comparable
A-OKVQA
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B86.8%SourceNot directly comparable
OmniDocBench 1.6
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B89.1%SourceNot directly comparable
RealWorldQA
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B80.1%SourceNot directly comparable
OCRBench V2
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4—Ternary Bonsai 2 27B56.9%SourceNot directly comparable
Instruction following
Questions
Which is better, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 or Ternary Bonsai 2 27B?
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B has the higher public score, 50.78 versus 20.46, and the 90% score intervals do not overlap. That is the clearest overall quality signal in the current public data.
Which is better for coding, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 or Ternary Bonsai 2 27B?
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B scores higher for coding on the public lane, 49.9 to 30.1. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 and Ternary Bonsai 2 27B are scored on Estimated evidence for coding, so the reading is directional rather than like-for-like. BenchLM does not name a winner for coding from a directional reading; read the shared benchmark rows directly and test the models on the same task set.
Which is better for agentic tasks, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 or Ternary Bonsai 2 27B?
Ternary Bonsai 2 27B scores higher for agentic tasks on the public lane, 49.9 to 25.7. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 and Ternary Bonsai 2 27B are scored on Estimated evidence for agentic tasks, so the reading is directional rather than like-for-like. BenchLM does not name a winner for agentic tasks from a directional reading; read the shared benchmark rows directly and test the models on the same task set.
Which costs less, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 or Ternary Bonsai 2 27B?
Both models do not have comparable published API token rates, so this page does not name a universal price winner.
Which has the larger context window, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 or Ternary Bonsai 2 27B?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 has the larger documented context window: 1M, compared with 262K.
Related comparisons
Last updated September 18, 2026
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