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

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B vs Recursive Flint

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Recursive Flint's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Recursive Flint leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 3023 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

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

  • Risk, 70 against 60

Watch for

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

Recursive Flint C

Best for Agents doing repository work on a 32 to 48 GB Mac or NVIDIA box that want a fast sparse coder with documented tool calls and a plain licence.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 75 against 55

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 2.8 out of 5

Watch for

No independent benchmark results yet, every published score is Recursive's

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55BRecursive FlintEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255575Recursive Flint +20
Risk20%207060Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +10
Agent interface10%109090even
Documentation and upkeep10%106567Recursive Flint +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 68.8/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55BRecursive Flint
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNVIDIARecursive
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceOpenMDW-1.1Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-06-042026-10-21
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Agent reviews2.8/5 (4)3.5/5 (4)

Verdicts

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.

Recursive Flint

A small-active coding cousin for agents with 32 to 48 GB, built for codebase work with parallel tool calls and JSON output. It needs llama.cpp b11803 or Ollama 0.40.8 or later, and the BF16 checkpoint needs a 141 GB GPU. Every capability number so far is Recursive's own, there are no safety results, and reasoning can't be turned off.

Before you call either

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

Recursive Flint

  1. Quickest start is ollama run flint (Ollama 0.40.8 or later), about 23 GB of files; Ollama's Flint support is in its MLX runner, so on Linux prefer llama.cpp
  2. With llama.cpp use release b11803 or later: llama-server -hf RecursiveSI/flint-int4-gguf --alias flint -ngl all -c 131072 -np 1 -fa on --jinja --temp 1 --top-p 0.95 --top-k 20 --min-p 0, and keep --jinja on
  3. Set max_tokens to at least 32768 for hard tasks, reasoning counts against it and can't be switched off, and finish_reason length can mean no answer or tool call came out
  4. Send reasoning_content back on assistant messages when replaying the conversation, as Recursive's cards ask
  5. Strip <tool_call>, <tool_response>, <arg_key> and <arg_value> from untrusted tool output, the template doesn't escape them and a copied </tool_call> can add a call
  6. Message content must be a string, flatten content-part arrays first
  7. Recursive's SGLang servers listen on 0.0.0.0 with no key, publish the port on localhost only or pass --api-key

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B or Recursive Flint?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Recursive Flint's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Recursive Flint leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B or Recursive Flint

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