Noometry

Model comparison

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen Max

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 34.7 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning NVIDIA

40.0

Rank #155 Confirmed

Qwen Max Alibaba (Qwen)

34.7

Rank #230 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen Max in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 37.5 to 22.3.
  • Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $1.60 / $6.40 for Qwen Max.
  • Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 33K.
  • Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Nemotron 3.5 LightningQwen Max
ProviderNVIDIAAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index40.034.7
Released2026-08-112024-04-03
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window262K33K
Max output262K8K
Input $ / M tokens$0.05$1.60
Output $ / M tokens$0.20$6.40
Results tracked1823

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Category by category

Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141), Qwen Max: 30.7 (#292)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen Max
LMArena Coding13751288
Aider Polyglot—21.8%

Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127), Qwen Max: 25.1 (#151)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen Max
LMArena Hard Prompts13371269

Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155), Qwen Max: 22.3 (#276)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen Max
LMArena Math13591275
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—16.1%
MATH Level 5—67.2%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—1%

Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154), Qwen Max: 30.3 (#228)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen Max
LMArena Expert13561248
GPQA Diamond—56.1%

Multilingual Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180), Qwen Max: 41.8 (#202)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen Max
LMArena Non-English12951263
LMArena Chinese13591254
LMArena French13661330
LMArena German12821254
LMArena Japanese12061205
LMArena Korean12381142
LMArena Russian12531274
LMArena Spanish13451290

Instruction Following Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170), Qwen Max: 66.5 (#208)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen Max
LMArena Instruction Following13181262

Long Context Too close to call

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165), Qwen Max: 39.4 (#180)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen Max
LMArena Longer Query13141288
Fiction.LiveBench—66.7%

Writing & Preference Too close to call

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201), Qwen Max: 47.8 (#205)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen Max
LMArena Text13271282
LMArena Creative Writing12541248
LMArena Multi-Turn13281277
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1280—

Frequently asked questions

Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than Qwen Max?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 34.7 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen Max?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens; Qwen Max lists at $1.60 and $6.40.

Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen Max better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 30.7 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 33K.

How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen Max share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Max has 23.

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