# Kimi K2.6 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Kimi K2.6 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/kimi-2-6-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4
- Last updated: September 24, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 6
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick Kimi K2.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Kimi K2.6 leads overall 59.12 to 19.1.
- The clearest category separation is in knowledge, where the averages are 59 for Kimi K2.6 and 20.7 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is BrowseComp in Agentic, with scores of 83.2% and 36.8%.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Kimi K2.6 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Moonshot AI | NVIDIA |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 256K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 59.12 | 19.1 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 37 | 13 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.95 / $4.00 | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Directional only
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 43.6 (Supported · #41/105)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 7.3 (Estimated · #104/105)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | 83.2% | 36.8% | Kimi K2.6 |
| OSWorld-Verified | 73.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon | 50% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | 55.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | 62.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | 92.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | 80.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 56.82% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | 18.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 4.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 53.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 23.5% | Coming soon |
| PinchBench | Coming soon | 83.4% | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | Coming soon | 9.5% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Directional only
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 47.4 (Supported · #42/135)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 11.4 (Estimated · #135/135)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.2% | 52.8% | Kimi K2.6 |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 89.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 58.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | 76.7% | 36.5% | Kimi K2.6 |
| SciCode | 52.2% | 31.4% | Kimi K2.6 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | 37.89% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench31 | 47.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 86.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 76.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 23.5% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 55.9 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 63.9 (#27/50)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | 79.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro w/ Python | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MathVision | 87.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| V* | 96.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Directional only
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 59 (Supported · #35/158)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 20.7 (Estimated · #154/158)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 90.5% | 75.6% | Kimi K2.6 |
| GPQA-D | 90.5% | 75.6% | Kimi K2.6 |
| HLE | 34.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 89.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 10.5% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | Coming soon | 81.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 68.5 (#67/124)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | Coming soon | 72.9% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 71 (#1/7)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | 96.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | 92.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMAnswerBench | 86.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 38.966% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 14.580% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Kimi K2.6 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4?

Kimi K2.6 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Kimi K2.6 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4?

The widest category gap is in knowledge, where the averages are 59 for Kimi K2.6 and 20.7 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4.

### How many benchmarks does Kimi K2.6 cover on BenchLM?

Kimi K2.6 currently has 37 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 cover on BenchLM?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 currently has 13 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Kimi K2.6 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-kimi-2-6)
- [Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4)
- [Kimi K2.6 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-kimi-2-6)
- [Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4)

## Explore More

- [Kimi K2.6 profile](/models/kimi-2-6)
- [Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 profile](/models/nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)