# Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen2.5-Coder-32B

> Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 32.9 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning-vs-qwen2-5-coder-32b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen2.5-Coder-32B in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 39.6 to 22.4.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $0.66 / $1 for Qwen2.5-Coder-32B.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 33K.

## Snapshot

| | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Coder-32B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.3 | 32.9 |
| Rank | 156 | 239 |
| Context | 262K | 33K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $0.66 |
| Output $/M | $0.16 | $1 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)
- Qwen2.5-Coder-32B: 22.4 (#328)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Coder-32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1370 | 1276 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 9% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 16.4% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 49% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 56.9% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 58% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 87.2% |
| MBPP+ | — | 77% |

## Reasoning

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)
- Qwen2.5-Coder-32B: 20.4 (#220)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Coder-32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | 1251 |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 42.1% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 49.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 119.41 |
| HellaSwag | — | 83% |
| LiveBench | — | 46.2% |
| WinoGrande | — | 80.8% |

## Math

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)
- Qwen2.5-Coder-32B: 30.8 (#203)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Coder-32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1355 | 1251 |
| LiveBench Math | — | 46.6% |
| GSM8K | — | 93% |

## Knowledge

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)
- Qwen2.5-Coder-32B: 32.9 (#200)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Coder-32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1354 | 1221 |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 70.5% |
| MMLU | — | 79.1% |

## Multilingual

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)
- Qwen2.5-Coder-32B: 38.0 (#230)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Coder-32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1292 | 1205 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1356 | 1222 |
| LMArena Russian | 1257 | 1228 |
| LMArena French | 1369 | — |
| LMArena German | 1280 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1213 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1233 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1321 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)
- Qwen2.5-Coder-32B: 61.6 (#240)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Coder-32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1317 | 1223 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 58.7% |

## Long Context

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)
- Qwen2.5-Coder-32B: 37.9 (#204)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Coder-32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1312 | 1251 |

## Writing & Preference

- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)
- Qwen2.5-Coder-32B: 41.8 (#235)

| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen2.5-Coder-32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1324 | 1230 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1254 | 1174 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1327 | 1222 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1280 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 23.3% |

## FAQ

### Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than Qwen2.5-Coder-32B?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 32.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen2.5-Coder-32B?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5-Coder-32B lists at $0.66 and $1.

### Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen2.5-Coder-32B better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.6 versus 22.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 33K.

### How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen2.5-Coder-32B share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5-Coder-32B has 31.