Model comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 38.1 on the Noometry Index.
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 Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 55.3 to 48.5.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
Side by side
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 40.0 | 38.1 |
| Released | 2026-08-11 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 262K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $1.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.20 | $7.50 |
| Results tracked | 18 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 35.5 (#223)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1375 | 1412 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1275 |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 41.2% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.9 (#123)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 25.5 (#149)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1337 | 1372 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
Math Too close to call
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.6 (#150)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1365 |
Knowledge Too close to call
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.0 (#162)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | 1338 |
Multilingual Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.7 (#148)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1295 | 1346 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1359 | 1357 |
| LMArena French | 1366 | 1398 |
| LMArena German | 1282 | 1325 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1206 | 1310 |
| LMArena Korean | 1238 | 1305 |
| LMArena Russian | 1253 | 1366 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1345 | 1360 |
Instruction Following Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.6 (#147)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | 1355 |
Long Context Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#131)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1314 | 1378 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.3 (#147)
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1327 | 1357 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1328 | 1365 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 38.1 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 35.5 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-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.