Model comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3 32B
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen3 32B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.0 vs 39.2), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.
NVIDIA
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3 32B in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 26.8 to 20.2.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $0.70 / $2.80 for Qwen3 32B.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.
Side by side
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3 32B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 40.0 | 39.2 |
| Released | 2026-08-11 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 131K |
| Max output | 262K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $0.70 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.20 | $2.80 |
| Results tracked | 18 | 26 |
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Category by category
Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141), Qwen3 32B: 37.7 (#190)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1375 | 1358 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 40% |
| SciCode | — | 35.4% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —, Qwen3 32B: 32.6 (#62)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 48.7% |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127), Qwen3 32B: 20.2 (#241)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1337 | 1334 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| DTBench | — | 67.5% |
| LMCA | — | 17.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 138.51 |
Math Qwen3 32B leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155), Qwen3 32B: 39.7 (#99)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1399 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 66.9% |
Knowledge Qwen3 32B leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154), Qwen3 32B: 40.0 (#125)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | 1362 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 65.7% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.9% |
Multilingual Qwen3 32B leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180), Qwen3 32B: 45.6 (#167)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1295 | 1317 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1359 | 1357 |
| LMArena German | 1282 | 1341 |
| LMArena Russian | 1253 | 1311 |
| LMArena French | 1366 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1206 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1238 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1345 | — |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170), Qwen3 32B: 68.9 (#179)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | 1305 |
Long Context Qwen3 32B leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165), Qwen3 32B: 43.8 (#87)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1314 | 1327 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 74.2% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3 32B leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201), Qwen3 32B: 52.9 (#163)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1327 | 1340 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | 1297 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1328 | 1331 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than Qwen3 32B?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen3 32B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.0 vs 39.2), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen3 32B?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens; Qwen3 32B lists at $0.70 and $2.80.
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen3 32B better for coding?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 37.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen3 32B share?
13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 32B has 26.