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Head-to-head comparison

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 (NVIDIA) and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (NVIDIA) compared on the ModelCap Index, API price, context window, provider availability, weight access and every public benchmark board they share. Figures are the same ones shown on the live rankings; nothing here is a hidden score.

Snapshot as of 13 September 2026

As of 13 September 2026, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#97 vs #180).

Which should you choose?

Choose Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 if…

  • ModelCap publishes no field on which Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 leads Nemotron 3.5 Lightning for this pair.

Choose Nemotron 3.5 Lightning if…

  • you want the stronger overall ModelCap Index position — #97 against #180 (44.1 vs 6.6 points).
  • you want provider choice — 4 listed API providers against 0.
  • you want the more recently listed model — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning was listed 11 August 2026, Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 20 August 2025.

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: specs, pricing and context

Specification comparison of Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
FieldLlama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3NVIDIANemotron 3.5 LightningNVIDIA
ModelCap Index position#180#97
Index score6.644.1
EvidenceInheritedMeasured
Input price / 1M tokensUnlisted$0.08
Output price / 1M tokensUnlisted$0.20
Context window— tokens262K tokens
Max output tokens—131K
API providers listed04
Weight accessRestricted licenseRestricted license
Input modalitiesTextText
First listed20 August 202511 August 2026
PublisherNVIDIANVIDIA

Evidence: finetune of meta-llama/llama-3.1-8b-instruct · finetune (100%) · 1 public benchmark observation across 1 board. Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.

Benchmark scores: Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

Public benchmark boards where Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has a published result
BoardLlama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3Nemotron 3.5 LightningLeads
AA Intelligence IndexArtificial Analysis—13.6intelligence-index:v4.3:reasoning-unspecifiedOnly one result
AA Terminal-Bench 2.1Artificial Analysis—24.3%terminal-bench:2.1:terminus-2:e2b:pass-at-1:3-repeats:source-model="Nemotron 3.5 Lightning":reasoning=trueOnly one result
AA Humanity's Last ExamArtificial Analysis—10.6%hle:may-2025:text-only-2158:no-tools:pass-at-1:source-model="Nemotron 3.5 Lightning":reasoning=trueOnly one result

Scores are the sources' own published figures for each model's best evaluated configuration; ModelCap never re-runs a benchmark.

Want a different pairing? Open the interactive comparison tool to swap either model for any current ranked language model.

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: common questions

Is Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 13 September 2026: #97 against #180. That is a capability ranking built from public benchmark evidence with published uncertainty; whether it is "better" for you also depends on price, context and where you can run it. Their published uncertainty intervals overlap, so the rank difference alone does not establish a reliable capability advantage for your workload.

Is Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 cheaper than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

At least one of the two has no listed API price on ModelCap right now, so no price comparison is made.

Which has the bigger context window, Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Both publish a —-token context window.

Which is better for coding, Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

The two models do not share a coding benchmark board on ModelCap yet, so no head-to-head coding score is published; the ModelCap Index position is the closest overall signal.

Are Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning open-weight models?

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3: Restricted license. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: Restricted license. Open weights mean the checkpoint can be downloaded and self-hosted under its licence; API-only models are available solely through hosted endpoints.

Where can I run Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

ModelCap currently lists 0 API providers for Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 and 4 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, from the OpenRouter catalogue snapshot the site serves; each model page lists the providers and their prices.

How current is this Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning comparison?

Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 13 September 2026; the page re-renders within a minute of each data refresh, and the ModelCap Index positions are the same ones shown on the live rankings.

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