Pareto 26.9 vs Nemotron 3 Ultra
Pareto 26.9 took 10 min 32 s and $0.34 at list price, Nemotron 3 Ultra took 14 min 14 s and $0.15 at list price. Nemotron 3 Ultra took 1.4× as long, and Pareto 26.9 cost 2.3× as much.
Pareto 26.9
Unbiased · $7.50/M out
Nemotron 3 Ultra
NVIDIA · $2.40/M out · free route · 48 HN pts
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
Patchbay is a small workshop in the heart of Rotterdam, where three people spend their days elbow-deep in the guts of vintage synthesizers. We fix the machines that made the sounds you grew up with—the ones that shaped entire genres and then got left in basements when the tech moved on. But we're not a museum. Our benches are covered in solder, schematics, and the occasional broken key that's been there for two weeks longer than we'd like to admit.
We started this studio because we got tired of seeing classic gear being stripped for parts, or worse, turned into Instagram decor. These instruments deserve better. They were built to make noise, and we want to keep them doing exactly that.
Between the three of us, we've fixed everything from a 1960s Buchla to a beat-up Juno that fell down a flight of stairs. If you've got a synth that's gone quiet, bring it in. We'll bring it back.
Patchbay began in a narrow workshop on the edge of Rotterdam’s Noord district, where the hum of aging oscillators meets the rhythm of the city’s canals. Founded by three synth enthusiasts — a former studio engineer, a circuit designer, and a musician who still plays the same Juno‑106 he bought in 1986 — the studio grew from late‑night repair sessions into a dedicated space for restoring the instruments that shaped electronic music’s golden era. Every unit that passes through our bench is treated with the same reverence we give a first‑press vinyl: capacitors are swapped, contacts cleaned, and calibration traced back to original service manuals. We don’t just fix synthesizers; we listen to their history, understand their quirks, and return them to the stage or studio ready to inspire the next generation of sound. Patchbay is small, intentional, and built on the belief that vintage gear deserves a future as vivid as its past.
Specs and numbers
| Pareto 26.9 | Nemotron 3 Ultra | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Unbiased | NVIDIA |
| Made in | — | US |
| Released | 13 Oct 2026 | 4 Jun 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $2.50 | free route (list $0.60/M) |
| Price out, per M tokens | $7.50 | free route (list $2.40/M) |
| Context | 262,144 tokens | 262,144 tokens |
| Weights | closed | open |
| Hacker News points | — | 48 |
| Time for the six prompts | 10 min 32 s | 14 min 14 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.34 | $0.15 |
Nemotron 3 Ultra was cheaper: $0.19 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Pareto 26.9 was faster: 3 min 41 s less in total, and faster on each of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, Pareto 26.9's Breakout game plays; Nemotron 3 Ultra's loads but doesn't start. Pareto 26.9's landing page was cut off at the output limit (12,000 tokens).





