Model vs model
Laguna S 2.1 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B
At a glance
Longer bar means the bigger number.
Open or closed · can you download the model and run it yourself?
Blended price · per 1M tokens, lower is better
Context window · tokens it can read at once
Where they sit among all 44 models
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B ranks 37th of the 43 models with an Intelligence Index. Up and to the left is smarter for less money. Hover or tap a dot for its numbers, then click it to compare that model with Laguna S 2.1.
Which one to pick
Pick Laguna S 2.1 if
- you need a longer context window (1M vs 262K tokens)
Pick Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B if
- you want the lower bill ($0.09 vs $0.11 per 1M tokens blended)
How smart is each one?
Every intelligence score we have
Out of 100, higher is better. Laguna S 2.1 Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B
Laguna S 2.1 has no Artificial Analysis scores yet, so only our own tests compare them.
Overall
Intelligence Index
12.9
By area
Coding
26.8Agentic work
3.5
By field of work
Finance & accounting
12.2Legal
15.5Healthcare & medicine
11.7Economics
22.8Engineering
18.1Strategy & operations
6.9
Benchmarks
Hard reasoning · Humanity's Last Exam
10.6Science · GPQA Diamond
74.3Scientific coding · SciCode
32.1Terminal tasks · Terminal-Bench 4.0
0.5Tool use · τ-Bench Banking
8.9Long documents · AA-LCR
60.3
The specs
| Spec | Laguna S 2.1 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.09 per 1M | $0.05 per 1M |
| Output price | $0.18 per 1M | $0.20 per 1M |
| Cost per test task | Not tested | Not tested |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 131K | 131K |
| Accepts | Text | Text |
| Open weights | Yes | Yes |
| Lab | Poolside | NVIDIA |
| Released | Jul 2026 | Aug 2026 |
| Knowledge cutoff | Not published | Sep 2025 |
Blended price weighs 3 parts input to 1 part output. List prices from models.dev.
Questions
Is Laguna S 2.1 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B cheaper?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B is cheaper. It charges $0.05 per 1M input tokens and $0.20 per 1M output tokens, against $0.09 and $0.18 for Laguna S 2.1. Blended 3 parts input to 1 part output, that is $0.09 against $0.11 per 1M tokens.
Are Laguna S 2.1 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B open source?
Both are open-weights models: Poolside and NVIDIA publish the weights, so you can download them and run them on your own hardware, or call them through any host's API. Check each model's license before you ship it.
Which has the longer context window?
Laguna S 2.1 accepts 1M tokens, against 262K for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B.
Can I compare Laguna S 2.1 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B on my own prompt?
Yes. ModelCompare sends one prompt to both models at once and shows each answer side by side with what it cost. You can try it free without an account.
Related comparisons
Where the numbers come from
Intelligence Index and benchmark scores are from Artificial Analysis, at each model’s highest effort, except SimpleQA, which is from Epoch AI, and the Uncensored score, which is from the UGI Leaderboard. The hallucination test is ours: questions with one exact answer, fake evidence pushed against right answers and requests that tempt a model to name packages that don’t exist. Prices are list prices from models.dev. Example answers come from our own test runs. Updated October 26, 2026.