Hermes 3 405B Instruct vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

Price, context window & benchmark comparison

Hermes 3 405B Instruct

Nous Research

$1.00 / $1.00

Input / Output · per 1M tokens

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

NVIDIA

$0.08 / $0.20

Input / Output · per 1M tokens

Compare different models

Verdict: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 9.1× cheaper than Hermes 3 405B Instruct on a typical 3:1 input/output mix. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has the larger context window (262K vs 131K).

	Hermes 3 405B Instruct	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Input price / 1M	$1.00	$0.08
Output price / 1M	$1.00	$0.20
Blended price (3:1)	$1.00	$0.11
Cached input / 1M	—	$0.04
Context window	131K	262K
Max output	16K	131K
Intelligence index	—	12.9
Coding index	—	26.8
Providers	—	4
Best provider uptime (30m)	—	100.0%
Vision input	No	No
Reasoning	No	Yes
Tool calling	No	Yes
Released	2024-08-16	2026-08-11
Retirement	—	—

Cost calculator

Input tokens / requestOutput tokens / requestRequests / day

FAQ

Which is cheaper, Hermes 3 405B Instruct or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 9.1× cheaper than Hermes 3 405B Instruct on a typical 3:1 input/output mix.

Hermes 3 405B Instruct vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: which has a bigger context window?

Hermes 3 405B Instruct: 131,072 tokens. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 262,144 tokens.

How much would 1 million requests cost?

At 2,000 input + 500 output tokens per request: Hermes 3 405B Instruct ≈ $2,500, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning ≈ $260.00.

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