Compare / Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B vs Kolibri-1
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B vs Kolibri-1
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 73.3 vs 68.3. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B wins 3 and Kolibri-1 wins 0. Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B is smaller: it needs about 46.9 GB of memory at 4-bit, against 49.6 GB for Kolibri-1. Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself.
Pick Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you mostly write code
- you build agents that call tools
- you have limited memory (about 46.9 GB at 4-bit)
- you need image input
Pick Kolibri-1 if…
- you work with long documents
- you need a permissive license (Apache-2.0)
Specifications
| Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B | Kolibri-1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 73.3 (likely 72–75) | 68.3 (likely 67–70) |
| Lab | NVIDIA · United States | Aleph Alpha · Europe |
| Released | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-03 |
| Parameters | 74B (9B active, MoE) | 78.1B (3.5B active, MoE) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~46.9 GB | ~49.6 GB |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 1M tokens |
| Input | text, image | text |
| Reasoning | Hybrid (thinking on/off) | Always thinks |
| License | OpenMDW-1.1 | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 7.7K | 22.8K |
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 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B | Kolibri-1 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | ≈ 86 | 80.0 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 88.8 | 84.3 |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 28.7 | 21.5 |
| AIME Math | ≈ 95 | 96.0 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | ≈ 84 | 85.9 |
| SWE-bench Verified Coding | ≈ 69 | 66.4 |
| Terminal-Bench Agentic | 53.9 | 27.7 |
| τ²-Bench Agentic | — | 80.4 |
| IFBench Instruction following | — | 78.1 |
| BFCL Agentic | — | 61.4 |
| AA-LCR Long context | 67.4 | — |
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 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B or Kolibri-1?
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 73.3 vs 68.3. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B wins 3 and Kolibri-1 wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself. Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B is smaller: it needs about 46.9 GB of memory at 4-bit, against 49.6 GB for Kolibri-1.
Which has the longer context window?
Kolibri-1 has the longer context window: 1M tokens against 262K.
Can I use Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B and Kolibri-1 commercially?
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B is released under OpenMDW-1.1 and Kolibri-1 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.
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