Model comparison

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3.5-9B

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified October 12, 2026. 0 shared benchmarks.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

NVIDIA

40.0

Rank #155 Confirmed

Qwen3.5-9B

Alibaba (Qwen)

33.8

Rank #236 Confirmed

Summary

The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5-9B leads 46.0 to 37.5.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $0.10 / $0.15 for Qwen3.5-9B.

Side by side

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen3.5-9B specifications
	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Qwen3.5-9B
Provider	NVIDIA	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	40.0	33.8
Released	2026-08-11	2026-02-23
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	262K	262K
Max output	262K	66K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.05	$0.10
Output $ / M tokens	$0.20	$0.15
Results tracked	18	10

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Category by category

Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Qwen3.5-9B
SciCode	—	27.5%
LMArena Coding	1375	—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —, Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Qwen3.5-9B
Terminal-Bench	—	9.2%

Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Qwen3.5-9B
CritPt	—	0.3%
Chess Puzzles	—	12%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1337	—
DTBench	—	71.2%
LMCA	—	24.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	139.46

Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Qwen3.5-9B
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions	—	48.5%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	61.7%
LMArena Math	1359	—

Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Qwen3.5-9B
GPQA Diamond	—	79%
LMArena Expert	1356	—

Multilingual Not comparable

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Non-English	1295	—
LMArena Chinese	1359	—
LMArena French	1366	—
LMArena German	1282	—
LMArena Japanese	1206	—
LMArena Korean	1238	—
LMArena Russian	1253	—
LMArena Spanish	1345	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Instruction Following	1318	—

Long Context Not comparable

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Longer Query	1314	—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Text	1327	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1254	—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	1280	—
LMArena Multi-Turn	1328	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than Qwen3.5-9B?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen3.5-9B?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5-9B lists at $0.10 and $0.15.

Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 35.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 262K tokens.

How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen3.5-9B share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.