Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
Step 3.5 Flash is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 66 to 48. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Step 3.5 Flash's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 78.3 against 53.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MuSR, 82 to 45.
Nemotron Ultra 253B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Step 3.5 Flash 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. Step 3.5 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 32K for Nemotron Ultra 253B.
Pick Step 3.5 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Nemotron Ultra 253B only becomes the better choice if you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.
Step 3.5 Flash
60.2
Nemotron Ultra 253B
46.7
Step 3.5 Flash
47.1
Nemotron Ultra 253B
33.7
Step 3.5 Flash
66.7
Nemotron Ultra 253B
44.7
Step 3.5 Flash
78.3
Nemotron Ultra 253B
53.3
Step 3.5 Flash
60.8
Nemotron Ultra 253B
42.4
Step 3.5 Flash
87
Nemotron Ultra 253B
78
Step 3.5 Flash
82.8
Nemotron Ultra 253B
70.1
Step 3.5 Flash
84.5
Nemotron Ultra 253B
59.7
Step 3.5 Flash is ahead overall, 66 to 48. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MuSR, where the scores are 82 and 45.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.8 versus 42.4. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 47.1 versus 33.7. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 84.5 versus 59.7. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 78.3 versus 53.3. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.2 versus 46.7. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 66.7 versus 44.7. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 78. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.8 versus 70.1. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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