# MAI-Thinking-1 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for MAI-Thinking-1 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/mai-thinking-1-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4
- Last updated: September 24, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 5
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick MAI-Thinking-1 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

- MAI-Thinking-1 leads overall 51 to 19.1.
- The clearest category separation is in instruction following, where the averages are 95.4 for MAI-Thinking-1 and 68.5 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is SWE-bench Verified in Coding, with scores of 73.5% and 52.8%.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | MAI-Thinking-1 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Microsoft | NVIDIA |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 256K | 1M |
| Overall Score | null | 19.1 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 14 | 13 |
| Pricing (input/output) | N/A | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Not comparable
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 7.3 (Estimated · #104/105)

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 46% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 23.5% | Coming soon |
| PinchBench | Coming soon | 83.4% | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 36.8% | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | Coming soon | 9.5% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Not comparable
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 11.4 (Estimated · #135/135)

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 87.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.5% | 52.8% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 52.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 46.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | Coming soon | 36.5% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 23.5% | Coming soon |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 31.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

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

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Graphwalks BFS 128K | 90% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Not comparable
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 20.7 (Estimated · #154/158)

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 84.2% | 75.6% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| GPQA-D | 84.2% | 75.6% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| MMLU-Pro | 85% | 81.6% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| SimpleQA | 31% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 10.5% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: MAI-Thinking-1
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 95.4 (#1/124)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 68.5 (#67/124)

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 85% | 72.9% | MAI-Thinking-1 |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 72.8 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 97% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AIME26 | 94.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | 84.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, MAI-Thinking-1 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4?

MAI-Thinking-1 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between MAI-Thinking-1 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4?

The widest category gap is in instruction following, where the averages are 95.4 for MAI-Thinking-1 and 68.5 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4.

### How many benchmarks does MAI-Thinking-1 cover on BenchLM?

MAI-Thinking-1 currently has 14 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

- [MAI-Thinking-1 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-mai-thinking-1)
- [Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4)
- [MAI-Thinking-1 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-mai-thinking-1)
- [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

- [MAI-Thinking-1 profile](/models/mai-thinking-1)
- [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)