Compare / Nemotron Nano 9B v2 vs Apertus 1.5 8B
Nemotron Nano 9B v2 vs Apertus 1.5 8B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Nemotron Nano 9B v2 scores higher on the Small LM Index: 52.5 vs 20.1. On the 1 benchmark both labs report, Nemotron Nano 9B v2 wins 1 and Apertus 1.5 8B wins 0. Both need about 7.2 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself.
Pick Nemotron Nano 9B v2 if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Pick Apertus 1.5 8B if…
- you work with long documents
- you need a permissive license (Apache-2.0)
- you need image input
Specifications
| Nemotron Nano 9B v2 | Apertus 1.5 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 52.5 (likely 48–57) | 20.1 (likely 15–28) |
| Lab | NVIDIA · United States | Swiss AI Initiative (Apertus) · Europe |
| Released | 2025-08-18 | 2026-07-24 |
| Parameters | 8.9B (dense) | 8.9B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~6.2 GB | ~7.2 GB |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 262K tokens |
| Input | text | text, image, audio |
| Reasoning | Hybrid (thinking on/off) | Hybrid (thinking on/off) |
| License | NVIDIA Open Model | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 141.1K | 42K |
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 Nano 9B v2 | Apertus 1.5 8B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | ≈ 74 | 48.8 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 64.0 | 27.2 |
| AIME Math | 72.1 | ≈ 16 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 71.1 | ≈ 20 |
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 Nano 9B v2 or Apertus 1.5 8B?
Nemotron Nano 9B v2 scores higher on the Small LM Index: 52.5 vs 20.1. On the 1 benchmark both labs report, Nemotron Nano 9B v2 wins 1 and Apertus 1.5 8B wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself. Both need about 7.2 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Apertus 1.5 8B has the longer context window: 262K tokens against 128K.
Can I use Nemotron Nano 9B v2 and Apertus 1.5 8B commercially?
Nemotron Nano 9B v2 is released under NVIDIA Open Model and Apertus 1.5 8B 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.