Compare / Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B vs Sarvam 30B

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B vs Sarvam 30B

Updated November 2026

Verdict

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B and Sarvam 30B are roughly tied on the Small LM Index (62.6 vs 61.6). On the 4 benchmarks both labs report, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B wins 3 and Sarvam 30B wins 1. Both need about 20.8 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.10 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.

Pick Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B if…

you need math and reasoning
you build agents that call tools
you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
you work with long documents
you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)

Pick Sarvam 30B if…

you need a permissive license (Apache-2.0)

Specifications

	Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B	Sarvam 30B
Small LM Index	62.6 (likely 59–66)	61.6 (likely 58–65)
Lab	NVIDIA · United States	Sarvam AI · Rest of Asia
Released	2025-12-15	2026-03-03
Parameters	31.6B (3.5B active, MoE)	32.2B (2.4B active, MoE)
Memory at 4-bit	~20.3 GB	~20.8 GB
Context window	1M tokens	131K tokens
Input	text	text
Reasoning	Hybrid (thinking on/off)	Always thinks
License	NVIDIA Open Model	Apache-2.0
API price / 1M tokens	$0.10 ($0.060 in, $0.24 out)	Self-host only
Hugging Face downloads (30 days)	1.7M	5K

Benchmarks

Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.

Benchmark	Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B	Sarvam 30B
MMLU-Pro Knowledge	78.3	80.0
GPQA Diamond Knowledge	73.0	66.5
Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning	10.6	≈ 12
AIME Math	89.1	88.3
LiveCodeBench Coding	68.3	≈ 71
SWE-bench Verified Coding	38.8	≈ 48
τ²-Bench Agentic	49.0	45.7
IFBench Instruction following	71.5	—
MMLU Knowledge	—	85.1
MATH-500 Math	—	97.0
HMMT Math	—	73.3

Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.

Questions

Which is better, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B or Sarvam 30B?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B and Sarvam 30B are roughly tied on the Small LM Index (62.6 vs 61.6). On the 4 benchmarks both labs report, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B wins 3 and Sarvam 30B wins 1.

Which is cheaper to run?

Only Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.10 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 20.8 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.

Which has the longer context window?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B has the longer context window: 1M tokens against 131K.

Can I use Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B and Sarvam 30B commercially?

Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B is released under NVIDIA Open Model and Sarvam 30B under Apache-2.0. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.