Compare/Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B vs Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)

Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3BvsGemini 3.5 Flash (high)

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

NVIDIA

Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B

Input
Output
Speed
TTFT
Google

Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)

Input
$1.5/M
Output
$9/M
Speed
171 tok/s
TTFT
27.29s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)
Faster (tok/s)
Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)
Lower Latency
Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)
Benchmarks (0-2)
Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)

Pricing Comparison

MetricNemotron Cascade 2 30B A3BGemini 3.5 Flash (high)
Input ($/M tokens)$1.5
Output ($/M tokens)$9
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)$2.40

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B
Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)
171 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B
Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)
27.29s

Editorial Analysis

Verdict. Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) takes the aggregate benchmark matchup 2–0 across 2 categories. Real workloads usually care about a handful of specific tasks — see the per-benchmark table above.

Pricing. Pricing varies significantly between these models — check the table above for the exact per-token rates. Many production workloads actually surface input-token cost (retrieval-augmented prompts, code-context windows), so factor both directions.

Strengths. Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B is strongest on Coding Index (25.3), Intelligence Index (17.8). Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) leads on Coding Index (70.1), Intelligence Index (52.0).

Speed. Speed data is incomplete for this pair; benchmark and price should decide.

Provider. NVIDIA and Google sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: NVIDIA tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Google often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.

Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
17.852.0
Coding Index
25.370.1
Math Index
GPQA Diamond
MMLU-Pro
LiveCodeBench
AIME 2025
MATH-500
Humanity's Last Exam
SciCode
IFBench
TerminalBench
Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B0 wins
2 winsGemini 3.5 Flash (high)

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B or Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)?

Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $3.38/M tokens vs $—/M for Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) wins 2 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) generates tokens faster at 171 tok/s vs — tok/s. However, Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) has lower time-to-first-token (27.29s vs —s).

When should I use Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B vs Gemini 3.5 Flash (high)?

Choose based on your priorities: Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) for lower cost, Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) for stronger benchmark performance, and Gemini 3.5 Flash (high) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.