Model comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen2.5-Max
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen2.5-Max score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.0 vs 40.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
NVIDIA
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen2.5-Max in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen2.5-Max leads 55.4 to 48.5.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 40.0 | 40.7 |
| Released | 2026-08-11 | 2025-01-25 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | — |
| Max output | 262K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.20 | — |
| Results tracked | 18 | 27 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen2.5-Max leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141), Qwen2.5-Max: 41.8 (#117)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1375 | 1359 |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 64.4% |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127), Qwen2.5-Max: 25.6 (#147)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1337 | 1360 |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 51.4% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 67.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 132.53 |
| LiveBench | — | 62.3% |
Math Too close to call
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155), Qwen2.5-Max: 36.9 (#162)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1369 |
| LiveBench Math | — | 58.4% |
Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154), Qwen2.5-Max: 35.3 (#186)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | 1337 |
| Confabulations | — | 21.8% |
Multilingual Qwen2.5-Max leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180), Qwen2.5-Max: 48.1 (#146)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1295 | 1352 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1359 | 1382 |
| LMArena French | 1366 | 1396 |
| LMArena German | 1282 | 1350 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1206 | 1300 |
| LMArena Korean | 1238 | 1304 |
| LMArena Russian | 1253 | 1353 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1345 | 1377 |
Instruction Following Qwen2.5-Max leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170), Qwen2.5-Max: 71.3 (#152)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | 1335 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 75.3% |
Long Context Qwen2.5-Max leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165), Qwen2.5-Max: 41.4 (#142)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1314 | 1358 |
Writing & Preference Qwen2.5-Max leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201), Qwen2.5-Max: 55.4 (#146)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1327 | 1367 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | 1339 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1328 | 1364 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 72.9% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 56.3% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than Qwen2.5-Max?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen2.5-Max score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.0 vs 40.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen2.5-Max better for coding?
Qwen2.5-Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.8 versus 40.4 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen2.5-Max share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5-Max has 27.