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Model comparison

Claude Opus 5 vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra

Anthropic against NVIDIA, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.

Catalog record checked September 3, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below

Anthropic

Claude Opus 5

Frontier

vs

NVIDIA

NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra

Frontier · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationClaude Opus 5NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra
ProviderAnthropicNVIDIA
TierFrontierFrontier
Context window1M1M
Max output128KNot verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens$5Winner: $0.50
Output / 1M tokens$25Winner: $2.20
WeightsClosedOpen
ParametersNot disclosedUnverified550B total / 55B active (MoE)
Reasoning levelsadaptivelow, high, max
Modalitiestext, imagetext
API model idclaude-opus-5nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b
ReleasedJuly 24, 2026June 4, 2026
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index [max] (2026-08-14)63Not verifiedUnverified
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14)Not verifiedUnverified54
Humanity's Last Exam (2026-09-01)63.6Not verifiedUnverified
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-09-03)86.7Not verifiedUnverified

Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

  • 2026-09-03: Meta Muse Spark 1.3 launch table (independent cross-vendor run; conflicts with Google's 89.1 — both preserved)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
  • 2026-09-02: Google Gemini 3.8 Flash launch eval table (independent cross-vendor run)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
  • 2026-09-01: Anthropic Fable 5.1 comparison table (vendor, with tools; 56.6 no tools)Frontier-knowledge ceiling: extremely hard multi-domain questions written to be near-impossible without deep expertise. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Subset/tool configurations (text-only vs with-tools) differ between vendors and materially change scores; must match configuration to compare.
  • 2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).

Pricing tiers: Claude Opus 5: Standard $5/$25 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Knowledge cutoff May 2026. · NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra: Open weights (weights + data + recipes); $0.50/$2.20 per MTok is the third-party hosted rate (OpenRouter). 550B/55B MoE.

FrontierRecord checked September 3, 2026

Claude Opus 5

Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic's top model for complex agentic coding and enterprise work — superseded at the top of the Artificial Analysis Index by Fable 5.1 (2026-09-01) but stronger on price.

Best for

  • Complex agentic coding
  • Enterprise work
  • Long-context analysis

Watch out

Output costs 5x input; long generations dominate the bill.

FrontierOpen weightsRecord checked September 2, 2026

NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra

Nemotron 3 Ultra is NVIDIA's open-weight (550B/55B) frontier MoE with a 1M-token context.

Best for

  • Open-weight frontier
  • Self-hosting on NVIDIA GPUs
  • Reasoning

Watch out

Top US open-weight until Thinking Machines Inkling; verify hosted pricing.

When the cheaper one wins

NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is cheaper on output at $2.20 per million tokens against $25 for Claude Opus 5 — about 11×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.

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Evidence confidence: High

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

  • Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
  • 3/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, parameter count.
  • 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
  • Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 8 days ago.
  • Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Claude Opus 5 · NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra

Common questions

Claude Opus 5 vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Claude Opus 5 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra cheaper for input?

NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is cheaper at $0.50 per million input tokens, against $5 for Claude Opus 5 — roughly 10× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Opus 5 has tiered pricing: Standard $5/$25 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Knowledge cutoff May 2026. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra has tiered pricing: Open weights (weights + data + recipes); $0.50/$2.20 per MTok is the third-party hosted rate (OpenRouter). 550B/55B MoE.

Is Claude Opus 5 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra cheaper for output?

NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is cheaper at $2.20 per million output tokens, against $25 for Claude Opus 5 — roughly 11× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Opus 5 has tiered pricing: Standard $5/$25 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Knowledge cutoff May 2026. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra has tiered pricing: Open weights (weights + data + recipes); $0.50/$2.20 per MTok is the third-party hosted rate (OpenRouter). 550B/55B MoE.

Which has the larger context window, Claude Opus 5 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra?

Both accept about 1M tokens of context, so document length will not decide between them.

Do Claude Opus 5 and NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra support the same reasoning levels?

Claude Opus 5 exposes adaptive, while NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra exposes low, high, max.

Should I use Claude Opus 5 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra?

Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Claude Opus 5 suits complex agentic coding; NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra suits open-weight frontier.

Can I self-host Claude Opus 5 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra?

NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Claude Opus 5 is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

  • Input price: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra costs $0.50 per 1M tokens versus $5 for Claude Opus 5 — a 10x difference at the headline tier.
  • Measured capability: Claude Opus 5 leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 63 to 54 (measured 2026-08-14).
  • Deployment: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
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