Nemotron 3.5 Super VL vs OpenAI API

Nemotron 3.5 Super VL

NVIDIA's free endpoint takes OpenAI-format requests with typed tool calls, JSON Schema output and an OpenAPI 3.1 file, and the weights run anywhere under a permissive licence. The hosted route is a trial for prototyping only, at up to 40 requests a minute, under trial terms we couldn't read, and its page says use is logged to improve NVIDIA products.

OpenAI API

Official OpenAPI document and an llms.txt index. Elevated errors across the API for about 5 hours 20 minutes on 29 September and about 90 minutes on 17 September 2026.

Nemotron 3.5 Super VL

1. Set chat_template_kwargs to {"enable_thinking": false} for short tasks. Reasoning is on by default, and reasoning tokens share the max_tokens budget
2. Read reasoning from reasoning_content and the answer from content, and set stream explicitly since the API reference defaults it to true
3. Don't send confidential or personal data to the hosted trial. The model page asks callers not to and says use is logged
4. Back off and retry on throttling. Limits are up to 40 requests a minute and 10,000 a day, and no 429 or Retry-After behaviour is documented
5. For production, use a partner endpoint or serve the weights. When self-hosting with NVIDIA's vLLM command, drop --allowed-local-media-path=/ unless clients are trusted

OpenAI API

1. Build on the Responses API. Astra calls tools only there
2. Use gpt-6-luna for routing and extraction and gpt-6.1-sol for most work. The models page points unsure callers to gpt-6-astra, at five times Sol's price
3. Move off the GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 snapshots before 2027-01-14, the gpt-5, o3 and related snapshots before 2026-12-11, and gpt-5.1, gpt-5.3-codex and gpt-5.4-nano before 2027-04-01. Check shutdown_date on GET /v1/models
4. Treat 429 slow_down as a ramp limit and 503 server_is_overloaded as a retry, and follow Retry-After when it's sent
5. Prompts over 272K tokens cost double on input. Trim before you pay for it