# Mercury 2.5 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Mercury 2.5 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/mercury-2-5-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4
- Last updated: September 8, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 4
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Mercury 2.5 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

- Mercury 2.5 leads overall 53 to 21.12.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 44.5 for Mercury 2.5 and 26.4 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is τ³-bench results in Agentic, with scores of 96.0% and 9.5%.
- 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 | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Inception | NVIDIA |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 260K | 1M |
| Overall Score | null | 21.12 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 5 | 13 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.04 / $0.15 | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 44.5 (Estimated · #91/152)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 26.4 (Estimated · #146/152)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 96.0% | 9.5% | Mercury 2.5 |
| DeepSearchQA | 34.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 23.5% | Coming soon |
| PinchBench | Coming soon | 83.4% | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 36.8% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 47.8 (Estimated · #73/151)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 30.6 (Estimated · #137/151)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SciCode | 38% | 31.4% | Mercury 2.5 |
| SWE-bench Verified | Coming soon | 52.8% | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | Coming soon | 36.5% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 23.5% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 67.7 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 54.8 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 48.3 (Estimated · #94/182)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 30.5 (Estimated · #175/182)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA-D | 79.0% | 75.6% | Mercury 2.5 |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 75.6% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 10.5% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | Coming soon | 81.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Mercury 2.5
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 80.1 (#53/121)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 public-lane score: 72.6 (#63/121)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 77% | 72.9% | Mercury 2.5 |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Mercury 2.5 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4?

Mercury 2.5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Mercury 2.5 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 44.5 for Mercury 2.5 and 26.4 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4.

### How many benchmarks does Mercury 2.5 cover on BenchLM?

Mercury 2.5 currently has 5 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

- [Mercury 2.5 vs Mercury 2.5 Preview](/compare/mercury-2-5-vs-mercury-2-5-preview)
- [Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 vs Mercury 2.5 Preview](/compare/mercury-2-5-preview-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4)
- [Mercury 2.5 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-mercury-2-5)
- [Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B NVFP4 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-nvfp4)

## Explore More

- [Mercury 2.5 profile](/models/mercury-2-5)
- [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)