Nemotron Ultra 253B vs Phi-4

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.

Nemotron Ultra 253B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 50 to 39. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Nemotron Ultra 253B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Phi-4 is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Nemotron Ultra 253B gives you the larger context window at 32K, compared with 16K for Phi-4.

Quick Verdict

Pick Nemotron Ultra 253B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Phi-4 only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Knowledge

Phi-4

Nemotron Ultra 253B

43.5

Phi-4

70.5

49
MMLU
84.8
48
GPQA
56.1
46
SuperGPQA
-
44
OpenBookQA
-
63
MMLU-Pro
-
11
HLE
-

Coding

Phi-4

Nemotron Ultra 253B

34

Phi-4

82.6

41
HumanEval
82.6
31
SWE-bench Verified
-
30
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

Nemotron Ultra 253B
49
AIME 2023
-
51
AIME 2024
-
50
AIME 2025
-
45
HMMT Feb 2023
-
47
HMMT Feb 2024
-
46
HMMT Feb 2025
-
48
BRUMO 2025
-
74
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Nemotron Ultra 253B
47
SimpleQA
-
45
MuSR
-
77
BBH
-

Instruction Following

Nemotron Ultra 253B
78
IFEval
-

Multilingual

Phi-4

Nemotron Ultra 253B

74

Phi-4

80.6

74
MGSM
80.6

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Phi-4?

Nemotron Ultra 253B is ahead overall, 50 to 39. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 41 and 82.6.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Phi-4?

Phi-4 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.5 versus 43.5. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Phi-4?

Phi-4 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 82.6 versus 34. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Nemotron Ultra 253B or Phi-4?

Phi-4 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.6 versus 74. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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