Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

LongCat-2.5 vs Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B scores 69.3 (B) on agent readiness against LongCat-2.5's 50.5 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

LongCat-2.5 D

Best for Operators with NPU clusters, and anyone tracking what the open flagships can do

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

3,562 GB in BF16 and 1,336 GB at 4 bits

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B B

Best for Agents with a multi-GPU Blackwell or Hopper node, or using a hosted endpoint, that want NVIDIA's strongest open model for long agent runs

Ahead on

  • Reach, 55 against 35
  • Risk, 70 against 60
  • Agent interface, 90 against 75
  • Documentation and upkeep, 70 against 46

Watch for

The smallest build is 352 GB and needs at least four B200-class GPUs

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Documentation and upkeep Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +24

LongCat-2.5 46

Model card 11, Intended use, limitations (the usage considerations), the architecture and the parameter counts are on the card. Training data 5, A general description of the training stages and where the reinforcement learning tasks came from, with no sources, sizes or cut-off. Last change 20, the last commit, on 10 November 2026, updated the card, on the day of this check. Responsiveness 0, Neither of the 2 discussions that aren't pull requests (9 and 10 November 2026) has a reply from a meituan-longcat member, counted on 10 November by author flags and dates with a script, text not read. Version policy 5, LongCat-2.0 stays in its own repositories and 2.5 came out in new ones, with no dated note on the older ones that we read. File health 5, the template is in both places and agrees, but config.json's auto_map names configuration_longcat_oe and modeling_longcat_oe, which aren't in the repository, and the tokenizer config's 131,072-token length is a quarter of the config's 524,288 positions. 11 + 5 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 46.

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 70

The model card earns 20, all seven items with limitations in the linked subcard. Training data earns 20, datasets listed with sources and token counts, cut-offs and filtering, and the corpora published. Last change earns 20, counting NVIDIA's own inference code for the model. The repositories last changed on 24 August, but NVIDIA's TensorRT-LLM, the runtime the card's own serving commands use, changed its Nemotron-H model code on 14 October, 18 days ago. Responsiveness earns 0, with no NVIDIA reply to any of nine questions. Version policy earns 5 as a first release. File health earns 5, since there is no LICENSE file, the BF16 card's SGLang command names a parser SGLang doesn't have, and tool-call reports wait without a reply.

Reach Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +20

LongCat-2.5 35

Memory 0, the smallest build is Meituan's W4A4 repository, 1,336 GB, and 1,336 GB × 1.2 = 1,603 GB, far above 256 GB. The BF16 files are 3,562 GB. Runtimes 0, none of the six runs it in a released version: vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.22.2 and llama.cpp b12242 have no LongcatCausalLM or pro_v code, and the model code config.json names isn't in the repository. Builds 10, one quantised build from Meituan, the W4A4 repository (4-bit experts, 1,336 GB). Terms 15, MIT in the metadata, the LICENSE file and the card, with nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for both repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it. 0 + 0 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 35.

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 55

Memory earns 0, because the smallest 4-bit build, NVIDIA's 352 GB NVFP4, needs about 423 GB with the fifth added, above the 256 GB band, and no runtime library has a local build. Runtimes earn 20 from released vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Transformers, with Ollama's cloud-only entry not counted. Builds earn 10 for the single NVFP4 build. Terms earn 10, because OpenMDW-1.1 is permissive with no threshold or use policy but isn't an OSI licence. Download earns 10, with no gate or account. Hosted earns 5, since NVIDIA's own API serves it and two providers host it.

Agent interface Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +15

LongCat-2.5 75

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (11,823 characters), with a copy in tokenizer_config.json. Tool-calling format 25, the card documents how tools are declared (the OpenAI function format) and how calls come back (tool_calls with an id, a name and JSON arguments, answered by a tool message), in a worked example against an OpenAI-compatible server. Trained tool calling 10, the card describes reinforcement learning on long agentic tasks and shows one tool call in a turn. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained output. Reasoning control 10, enable_thinking on or off per request through chat_template_kwargs, with the reasoning returned as reasoning_content, both shown on the card. Context 10, the card states no context length, but config.json gives 524,288 positions and the card's own evaluations ran at 512K and 1M sequence lengths after what it calls long-context training, so 128K or more is taken as trained. 20 + 25 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 75.

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 90

The chat template earns 20, a Jinja file in the repository. The tool-calling format earns 25, since the card names the qwen3_coder parser and shows a tool call declared and read back. Trained tool calling earns 20, with tool-use training and several calls per turn in the template. Structured output earns 5, claimed from training with no instructions. Reasoning control earns 10, thinking off or medium effort per request with a runtime parser that returns the reasoning apart. Context earns 10 for up to 1M tokens.

Risk Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +10

LongCat-2.5 60

File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, the files sit in the meituan-longcat organisation, the name of Meituan's GitHub organisation that the card links for deployment, and the card's licence names Meituan (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions under Usage Considerations: not evaluated for every use, assess accuracy, safety and fairness before sensitive use, and follow the law. Licence risk 15, MIT with no use policy, no threshold and no right to change the terms. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw on the card beyond a general contact, and Meituan's own security pages weren't looked up, so this scores as absent and is an open question. 25 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 15 + 0 = 60.

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 70

File safety earns 15, safetensors only but with 10 off because the documented commands pass trust-remote-code and the repository ships Python files. Provenance earns 15, files in NVIDIA's linked organisation with a hash for every file. Safety evaluation earns 0, since NVIDIA describes safety training but publishes no results. Agent guidance earns 15, as the technical report documents training the model to ignore instructions injected through tool output, beside the subcard's warnings and safeguards. Licence risk keeps all 15 under OpenMDW-1.1. The security programme earns 10 for the reporting route on the card and NVIDIA's public bulletins.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLongCat-2.5Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%253555Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +20
Risk20%206070Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +10
Agent interface10%107590Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +15
Documentation and upkeep10%104670Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +24
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 50.5/100B 69.3/100

Facts side by side

FactLongCat-2.5Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorMeituan (LongCat)NVIDIA
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITOpenMDW-1.1
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-102026-06-04
Terms last updatednot read yetno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2.8/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

LongCat-2.5

Meituan's flagship is MIT-licensed and documented for tool calling and switchable reasoning, with strong numbers of its own on agentic coding. Almost nobody can run it: 3,562 GB of weights, a 1,336 GB 4-bit build for NPU accelerators, and no released runtime with its architecture. A model to watch until a runtime or a provider picks it up.

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B

NVIDIA's frontier-scale agent cousin with trained parallel tool calls, up to a 1M-token context and training against prompt injection through tool output. It needs at least four Blackwell GPUs for the 352 GB NVFP4 build, so most agents will use NVIDIA's API or a provider. The main risks are serving commands that run repository code and no published safety results.

Before you call either

LongCat-2.5

  1. You can't run this on a workstation or a single GPU server. Plan for a provider, and none serves it yet
  2. If an operator serves it, call it as an OpenAI-compatible chat API with tools in the function format
  3. Pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking true or false
  4. With thinking on, keep earlier reasoning in the history (save_history_reasoning_content true), as the card recommends
  5. The card's results use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95
  6. Its benchmark table is Meituan's own. The unmarked scores are in-house

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B

  1. It doesn't fit the 128 GB reference machine at any precision. Call NVIDIA's API (model nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b) or a provider instead
  2. With vLLM serve the NVFP4 build with --trust-remote-code --reasoning-parser nemotron_v3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder on 4 × B200 or more
  3. With SGLang use --reasoning-parser nemotron_3, not the BF16 card's nemotron_v3, which SGLang doesn't register
  4. On SGLang with tools, pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking true and force_nonempty_content true, as the card says, or reasoning and calls won't both parse
  5. Thinking is on by default. Pass enable_thinking: false for short tasks or medium_effort: true to cut reasoning tokens
  6. Use temperature=1.0 and top_p=0.95, as the generation config sets

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, LongCat-2.5 or Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B scores 69.3 (B) on agent readiness against LongCat-2.5's 50.5 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with LongCat-2.5 or Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B

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