API cost decision in 10 seconds
Granite 4.1 8B vs 🔥Nemotron 3 Super (free)
Pick Nemotron 3 Super (free) when budget and context both matter.
Pricing data updated:
Prices normalized to USD per 1M tokens
Sample workload: 1M input + 500K output
Budget verdict
Pick Nemotron 3 Super (free) when budget and context both matter.
On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Nemotron 3 Super (free) is estimated at $0 vs $0.1 for Granite 4.1 8B, saving $0.1 (100% lower).
Cost-first pickNemotron 3 Super (free)
Context-first pickNemotron 3 Super (free)
Sample savings$0.1100%
10x traffic gap$1
Nemotron 3 Super (free) is cheaper on the standard workload and also has the larger context window. At 10x that traffic, the same price gap is about $1. Use the calculator below to replace the sample workload with your own token volume.
Cost sensitivity
Workload Sensitivity
Nemotron 3 Super (free) stays cheaper across input-heavy, balanced, and output-heavy sample workloads.
| Workload shape | Token mix | Better pick | Granite 4.1 8B | Nemotron 3 Super (free) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Input-heavy / RAG | 5M input + 500K output | Nemotron 3 Super (free) | $0.3 | $0 |
| Balanced workload | 1M input + 1M output | Nemotron 3 Super (free) | $0.15 | $0 |
| Output-heavy chatbot | 1M input + 5M output | Nemotron 3 Super (free) | $0.55 | $0 |
Estimate your workload cost
Your Workload Cost
This estimate uses normalized public API pricing per 1M tokens. It is a planning aid, not a billing quote. Verify provider pricing, limits, and terms before production use.
Quick Decision
Nemotron 3 Super (free) has the lower input price, Nemotron 3 Super (free) has the lower output price, and Nemotron 3 Super (free) offers the larger context window.
For a 1M input token plus 500K output token workload, the estimated API cost is $0.1 for Granite 4.1 8B and $0 for Nemotron 3 Super (free).
Choose Granite 4.1 8B when its provider, model quality, latency, or availability is more important than the numeric price/context winner.
Choose Nemotron 3 Super (free) when you care most about lower input-token price, lower output-token price, and larger context window.
| Feature | Granite 4.1 8B (IBM) | 🔥Nemotron 3 Super (free) (NVIDIA) |
|---|---|---|
| Input Price prompt tokens per 1M | $0.05 | $0 |
| Completion Price per 1M tokens | $0.1 | $0 |
| Sample Workload Cost 1M input + 500K output | $0.1 | $0 |
| Context Window | 131.07K | 1M |
| Release Date | 2026-04-30 | 2026-03-11 |
| Popularity | #9 |
Granite 4.1 8B is a dense, decoder-only 8-billion-parameter language model from IBM, part of the Granite 4.1 family. It supports a 131K-token context window and is designed for enterprise tasks...
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super is a 120B-parameter open hybrid MoE model, activating just 12B parameters for maximum compute efficiency and accuracy in complex multi-agent applications. Built on a hybrid Mamba-Transformer...
Use-Case Decision Matrix
| Use case | Better pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Budget-constrained production | Nemotron 3 Super (free) | On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Nemotron 3 Super (free) is estimated at $0 vs $0.1 for Granite 4.1 8B, saving $0.1 (100% lower). |
| High-volume input processing | Nemotron 3 Super (free) | Lower prompt-token price matters most when prompts or retrieved passages dominate the bill. |
| Long responses and chatbots | Nemotron 3 Super (free) | Lower output-token price matters most when assistants generate many completion tokens. |
| RAG or long-document work | Nemotron 3 Super (free) | A larger context window leaves more room for retrieved passages and source files. |