LLMnvidia

NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (free)

NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B is a small language MoE model with highest compute efficiency and accuracy for developers to build specialized agentic AI systems. The model is fully...

Anyone in the Space can @-mention NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (free) with the team's shared context - pooled credits, one chat, one memory.

All models

Starter is free forever - 1 Space, 100 credits/month, 1 MCP. No card.

Verdict

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B is NVIDIA's free-tier offering with a massive 256K context window, making it unusually capable for long-document tasks at zero cost. The 30B parameter count sits in the mid-range sweet spot for speed versus capability. Without public benchmarks, you're trading proven performance metrics for cost savings and generous context. Reach for this when budget constraints matter more than leaderboard rankings, especially for context-heavy workflows like legal document review or codebase analysis.

Best for

  • Zero-cost prototyping and experimentation
  • Long-document summarization and analysis
  • Large codebase comprehension tasks
  • High-volume inference on tight budgets
  • Educational and research projects

Strengths

The 256K token context window rivals models costing $3-15 per million tokens, enabling full-book analysis or multi-file code reviews in a single pass. At 30B parameters, inference speed should outpace 70B+ models while maintaining reasonable reasoning depth. Zero pricing removes friction for high-volume experimentation and makes it viable for student projects or early-stage startups burning through tokens during development.

Trade-offs

Absence of public benchmarks means no MMLU, HumanEval, or MT-Bench scores to gauge reasoning quality against peers like Llama 3.1 70B or Qwen 2.5 72B. The proprietary license limits deployment flexibility compared to open-weight alternatives. NVIDIA's model lineup changes rapidly, so long-term API stability is uncertain. You're betting on context length and price over proven performance metrics that would guide production decisions.

Specifications

Provider
nvidia
Category
llm
Context length
256,000 tokens
Max output
Modalities
text
License
proprietary
Released
2025-12-14

Pricing

Input
$0.00/Mtok
Output
$0.00/Mtok
Model ID
nvidia/nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b:free

Per-token prices show what the model costs upstream. On Switchy your team draws from one shared org credit pool - one plan, one balance for everyone.

Team cost calculator

Estimated monthly spend
Freeno token cost
17.6M tokens / month
5 seats · 80 msgs/day

Switchy meters this against your org's shared credit pool - one plan, one balance for everyone.

Providers

ProviderContextInputOutputP50 latencyThroughput30d uptime
nvidia256k$0.00/Mtok$0.00/Mtok

Performance

Performance snapshots are collected daily. Check back after the next ingestion run.

Benchmarks

Public benchmark scores are not available yet for this model. Check back after the next ingestion run.

Works well with

Top MCPs

Compatibility data comes from first-party telemetry; once we have enough co-usage signal, top MCPs for this model will appear here.

How Switchy teams use it

Not enough Spaces have used this model yet to share anonymised team stats. We wait for at least 50 distinct Spaces per week before publishing any aggregate.

Starter prompts

Analyze Codebase Architecture

I'm providing the contents of 15 Python files from a web application. Describe the overall architecture, identify the main data flow from HTTP request to database, and flag any circular dependencies or anti-patterns.
Open in a Space →

Compare Research Papers

Here are three research papers on the same topic. Compare their methodologies, highlight where their findings agree or conflict, and suggest which study has the most robust experimental design.
Open in a Space →

Extract Meeting Action Items

This is a transcript from a 4-hour product planning meeting. List every action item mentioned, who owns it, and the stated deadline. Group by project workstream.
Open in a Space →

Debug Complex Error Logs

Here are 50,000 lines of application logs covering a 6-hour window. A user reported a checkout failure at 14:32. Trace backwards to find the root cause, including any database connection issues or API timeouts that preceded it.
Open in a Space →

Example outputs

Illustrative - representative of the model's voice and quality, not literal recordings.

Prompt

Review this Python function for potential bugs. Focus on edge cases that could cause runtime errors: ```python def calculate_discount(price, discount_pct): return price - (price * discount_pct / 100) ```

Output

The function has several edge cases to consider: 1. **Negative inputs**: No validation for negative price or discount_pct values, which could produce nonsensical results. 2. **Discount > 100%**: A discount_pct above 100 would result in a negative final price, which may not be intended. 3. **Type safety**: No type checking—passing strings or None would raise TypeError at runtime. 4. **Floating-point precision**: For financial calculations, using float arithmetic can introduce rounding errors. Recommend adding input validation and considering Decimal for monetary values.

Notes

This example highlights Nemotron 3 Nano's code analysis capability within its 256K token context window, useful for reviewing functions with surrounding context. The model identifies practical edge cases rather than theoretical ones. However, without benchmark data, it's unclear how its bug-detection accuracy compares to specialized code models—users should verify suggestions in critical codebases.

Prompt

Summarize the key regulatory changes in this 50-page compliance document, focusing on what our finance team needs to implement by Q2. [Document text follows...]

Output

Based on the document, three critical changes require Q2 implementation: **1. Enhanced reporting requirements (Section 4.2)**: Monthly reconciliation reports must now include subsidiary-level breakdowns, not just consolidated figures. Deadline: April 30. **2. New approval thresholds (Section 7.1)**: Transactions exceeding $500K (down from $1M) require board-level approval. Effective March 1. **3. Data retention extension (Section 9.4)**: Financial records must be retained for 10 years instead of 7, with quarterly audit trail verification. The document also mentions upcoming changes to international transfer protocols, but implementation is deferred to Q3.

Notes

Demonstrates the model's 256K token context advantage—it can process lengthy documents in a single pass and extract action items. The free pricing makes it viable for high-volume document processing. Trade-off: without published benchmarks, accuracy on domain-specific terminology (legal, medical) remains unverified, so outputs need human review for compliance-critical work.

Prompt

I'm explaining our API architecture to a new developer. Rewrite this technical description in simpler terms without losing accuracy: 'The service implements a distributed event-driven architecture with CQRS pattern, utilizing message queues for asynchronous command processing and eventual consistency across read replicas.'

Output

Here's a clearer explanation: 'Our service is split into two parts: one handles changes (writes), and another handles lookups (reads). When someone makes a change—like updating a user profile—the system doesn't process it immediately. Instead, it adds the request to a queue, which gets processed in the background. This means the change might not show up instantly when you query the data—it takes a few moments to sync across all our read servers. We built it this way so the system can handle lots of requests at once without slowing down.' This preserves the core concepts (separation of reads/writes, async processing, eventual consistency) while removing jargon.

Notes

Shows the model's ability to translate technical concepts for different audiences—valuable for documentation and onboarding. The free tier makes it cost-effective for internal knowledge base generation. Limitation: the model's training cutoff and lack of benchmark data mean it may not recognize the latest framework-specific terminology, so technical accuracy should be spot-checked for cutting-edge architectures.

Use-case deep-dives

Prototype chatbot development

Free 256K context makes Nemotron 3 Nano ideal for early-stage bot testing

A 4-person startup building a customer support chatbot needs to iterate fast without burning budget on API calls during the prototype phase. Nemotron 3 Nano 30B delivers zero-cost inference with a 256K token context window—enough to load entire conversation histories, product docs, and FAQ sets into a single prompt. The lack of public benchmarks means you're flying blind on accuracy versus GPT-4 or Claude, but for internal testing where you're validating conversation flow and retrieval logic, free compute at this context size is hard to beat. Once you've proven the concept and need production-grade reasoning, migrate to a benchmarked model. Use Nemotron 3 Nano when your burn rate matters more than your benchmark score.

Long-document summarization experiments

256K context handles full research papers, but verify output quality manually

A solo researcher or 2-person consultancy needs to summarize 40-page technical reports into executive briefs without paying per-token fees. Nemotron 3 Nano's 256K window fits most academic papers or white papers in one shot, eliminating chunking complexity. The zero-cost pricing means you can run dozens of summarization experiments to tune your prompt without watching a meter. The downside: no MMLU, no HumanEval, no public accuracy data to predict whether the summaries will hallucinate or miss key findings. You'll need to spot-check every output against the source material. This model works when you have time to validate and the document length exceeds what cheaper-context models can handle. If accuracy is non-negotiable, pay for a benchmarked alternative.

Internal knowledge base Q&A

Free inference for low-stakes company wiki queries with massive context

A 12-person operations team wants to let employees ask natural-language questions against a 200-page internal procedures wiki. Nemotron 3 Nano's 256K context can ingest the entire wiki as reference material in every query, and the zero-cost pricing means unlimited employee usage without a line-item. The risk: without benchmark data, you don't know if the model will confidently cite nonexistent procedures or misinterpret edge cases. This setup works for low-stakes lookups where a wrong answer just means someone double-checks the wiki manually. If the queries inform compliance decisions or customer-facing actions, the lack of verified accuracy is a dealbreaker. Deploy Nemotron 3 Nano when convenience and cost trump precision, and you have humans in the loop.

Frequently asked

Is Nemotron 3 Nano 30B good for general text tasks?

Yes, it handles standard text generation, summarization, and Q&A well enough for prototyping or low-stakes applications. The 30B parameter count puts it in the mid-tier range—capable but not competitive with frontier models like GPT-4 or Claude for complex reasoning. It's free, so expect performance trade-offs compared to paid alternatives.

Is Nemotron 3 Nano free compared to GPT-4o or Claude?

Yes, it's completely free at $0.00 per million tokens versus GPT-4o at $2.50/$10.00 and Claude Sonnet at $3.00/$15.00. You're trading cost for capability—Nemotron won't match their reasoning depth or instruction-following precision, but for high-volume experimentation or budget-constrained projects, the price is unbeatable.

Can it handle 256k token context windows reliably?

The 256k context window is advertised, but real-world performance at that length is unverified without public benchmarks. Expect degraded coherence past 100k tokens, typical for models in this class. For long-document tasks requiring consistent quality across the full context, test thoroughly or use a proven alternative like Claude with needle-in-haystack validation.

How does Nemotron 3 Nano compare to Llama 3.1 70B?

Llama 3.1 70B outperforms it on reasoning and instruction-following due to more parameters and Meta's extensive training data. Nemotron's advantage is the free tier and NVIDIA's inference optimization if you're running on their hardware. If quality matters more than cost, choose Llama. If you need zero spend for testing, Nemotron works.

Should I use this for production chatbots or customer support?

Not recommended for customer-facing production without extensive testing. The lack of public benchmarks means you're flying blind on accuracy, safety, and edge-case handling. Use it for internal tools, prototypes, or non-critical automation where occasional mistakes are acceptable. For production chat, pay for a model with proven reliability metrics.

Data last verified 8 hours ago.Sources aggregated hourly to weekly. See docs/architecture/model-directory.md.