Noometry

Model comparison

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3.5 Plus

Qwen3.5 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 39.3 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning NVIDIA

39.3

Rank #156 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 Plus Alibaba (Qwen)

42.3

Rank #103 Confirmed

Summary

  • The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.5 Plus leads 47.9 to 34.7.
  • Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $2.40 for Qwen3.5 Plus.
  • Qwen3.5 Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Nemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 Plus
ProviderNVIDIAAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index39.342.3
Released2026-08-112026-02-16
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window262K1M
Max output262K66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.06$0.40
Output $ / M tokens$0.16$2.40
Results tracked1815

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Coding1370—
ALE-Bench—621.92

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —, Qwen3.5 Plus: —

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 Plus
Vending-Bench 2—0.54

Reasoning Qwen3.5 Plus leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128), Qwen3.5 Plus: 32.0 (#67)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 Plus
Chess Puzzles—22%
LMArena Hard Prompts1335—
Mystery Game Puzzles—17%
DTBench—80.5%
LMCA—36.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index—146.79

Math Qwen3.5 Plus leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156), Qwen3.5 Plus: 47.9 (#55)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 Plus
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—86.7%
LMArena Math1355—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—21%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—2.1%

Knowledge Qwen3.5 Plus leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154), Qwen3.5 Plus: 46.0 (#78)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 Plus
GPQA Diamond—84.8%
SimpleQA Verified—25.4%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—10.7%
LMArena Expert1354—

Multilingual Not comparable

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Non-English1292—
LMArena Chinese1356—
LMArena French1369—
LMArena German1280—
LMArena Japanese1213—
LMArena Korean1233—
LMArena Russian1257—
LMArena Spanish1321—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Instruction Following1317—

Long Context Qwen3.5 Plus leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160), Qwen3.5 Plus: 42.9 (#109)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 Plus
CL-bench—19.8%
CL-bench Life—12.4%
LMArena Longer Query1312—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Text1324—
LMArena Creative Writing1254—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1280—
LMArena Multi-Turn1327—

Frequently asked questions

Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than Qwen3.5 Plus?

Qwen3.5 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 39.3 on the Noometry Index. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen3.5 Plus?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 Plus lists at $0.40 and $2.40.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen3.5 Plus share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 Plus has 15.

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