# Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B vs Ripple-65B Preview (slim)

> Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B scores 64.7 (B) to Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D) for open-weight models you run yourself. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-vs-ripple-65b-preview.md (~8,750 tokens) · this version ~1,680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-vs-ripple-65b-preview.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b-vs-ripple-65b-preview
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-04
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Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B scores 64.7 (B) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B: B 64.7, rank #20 of 121 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nemotron-3-5-lightning-30b-a3b.min.md
- Ripple-65B Preview: D 53.3, rank #103 of 121 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ripple-65b-preview.min.md
- 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 Reach, 85 against 45; Risk, 75 against 55; Agent interface, 90 against 75; Documentation and upkeep, 75 against 49.
- Ripple-65B Preview, good for Teams with Blackwell GPUs or a DGX Spark who want an Apache 2.0 coding model to try for terminal and agentic coding work, and can run the publisher's code to serve it.

| Category | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B | Ripple-65B Preview |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 85 | 45 |
| Risk (20%) | 75 | 55 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 90 | 75 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 75 | 49 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B | Ripple-65B Preview |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | NVIDIA | Ricursive Intelligence |
| Licence | OpenMDW-1.1 | Apache-2.0 |
| Last release | 2026-08-11 | 2026-11-04 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | not read yet |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reach, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B +40: 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. Runtimes earn the full 25 from released vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp, Transformers, Ollama and LM Studio. Builds earn 10, as NVIDIA's only quantised build is NVFP4. 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 Fireworks hosts it.); Ripple-65B Preview 45 (Memory 10 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build is Ricursive's NVFP4 at 57.2 GB, 68.7 GB with a fifth added, which is over 64 GB and fits our reference machine. Runtimes 0, no released runtime runs the ricursive architecture with its own code; Ricursive's SGLang plugin and Transformers' remote code don't count. Builds 10, one quantised precision (NVFP4) from Ricursive. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, Ricursive serves no API, Hugging Face maps no provider, Together AI's page says coming soon, and GMI Cloud's and OpenRouter's pages weren't read.)
- Documentation and upkeep, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B +26: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B 75 (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 as for the other Nemotron listings. The repositories last changed on 10 September, 53 days ago, and TensorRT-LLM, which the card's serving section runs, changed its Nemotron-H model code on 14 October, 19 days ago. Responsiveness earns 5, one NVIDIA reply across 14 questions. Version policy earns 5 as a first release. File health earns 5, since reports about the card's recipes wait without a reply and the llama.cpp recipe names a quantisation the linked repository doesn't hold.); Ripple-65B Preview 49 (Model card 14 of 20, no limitations and no knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a general description with token counts and no cut-off. Last change 20, released today. Responsiveness 0, no discussions yet, read as none answered. Version policy 5, a first release, with the NVFP4 checkpoint replaced in place on release day under a commit note. File health 5, tokenizer_config.json carries a second, tool-less chat template and a 131,072-token limit against the card's 1M.)
- Risk, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B +20: 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. Provenance earns 15, files in NVIDIA's linked organisation with a hash for every file. Safety evaluation earns 0, since NVIDIA says it evaluated content safety but publishes no results. Agent guidance earns 10, a subcard that names prompt injection and the safeguards to add, without an instruction hierarchy. 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.); Ripple-65B Preview 55 (File safety 15, safetensors only, less 10 because the documented way to run it loads Ricursive's Python. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation ricursive.com links to, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 10, Ricursive's own FORTRESS and StrongREJECT results. Agent guidance 0, nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw.)
- Agent interface, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B +15: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B 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 per request with runtime parsers that return the reasoning apart. Context earns 10 for up to 1M tokens.); Ripple-65B Preview 75 (Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Ricursive's server README says how tools are declared and calls come back, with the ripple parser in SGLang 0.5.19. Trained tool calling 20, one or more calls a turn and agentic-coding RL. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, the template has no thinking switch or effort levels. Context 10, long-context training at 2M-token sequences for a stated 1M.)