# Devstral Small 2 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B (slim)

> Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B scores 64.7 (B) to Devstral Small 2's 61 (C) for open-weight models you run yourself. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B scores 64.7 (B) on agent readiness against Devstral Small 2's 61 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Devstral Small 2 leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- Devstral Small 2: C 61, rank #60 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/devstral-small-2.min.md
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B: B 64.7, rank #20 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b.min.md
- Devstral Small 2, good for Developers who want a dependable local coding agent on one consumer GPU or a 32 GB Mac Ahead on Reach, 90 against 85.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B, good for Agents on one 24 to 32 GB GPU or Mac that want a fast tool-calling reasoning model with long context and a permissive licence Ahead on Risk, 75 against 60; Agent interface, 90 against 65; Documentation and upkeep, 75 against 46.

| Category | Devstral Small 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 90 | 85 |
| Risk (20%) | 60 | 75 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 65 | 90 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 46 | 75 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Devstral Small 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Mistral AI | NVIDIA |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | OpenMDW-1.1 |
| Last release | 2026-07-15 | 2026-08-11 |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Documentation and upkeep, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B +29: Devstral Small 2 46 (Model card 11, Intended use, the architecture, the parameters and the context are on the card.); Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B 75 (The model card earns 20, all seven items with limitations in the linked subcard.)
- Agent interface, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B +25: Devstral Small 2 65 (Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (11,362 characters), with the tokenizer's tekken file for mistral-common.); Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B 90 (The chat template earns 20, a Jinja file in the repository.)
- Risk, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B +15: Devstral Small 2 60 (File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository.); Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B 75 (File safety earns 25, safetensors only with no Python files, and nothing from the repository runs to load it or parse its output.)
- Reach, Devstral Small 2 +5: Devstral Small 2 90 (Memory 25, the smallest build at 4 bits from a runtime's own library is Ollama's devstral-small-2 at Q4_K_M, 15 GB, and 15 GB × 1.2 = 18 GB, within 24 GB.); Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B 85 (Memory earns 25, since ggml-org's 18.9 GB Q4_0 GGUF and Ollama's 19 GB nvfp4 build both need under 24 GB with the fifth added.)