Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3.5 27B: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is developed by NVIDIA, while Qwen3.5 27B comes from Alibaba. Qwen3.5 27B was released in March 2026, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) followed 5 months later in August 2026. The two are similar in size, at about 30 billion and 27 billion parameters respectively.
The two models share 7 published benchmarks. Qwen3.5 27B leads on 7 of them. The widest gaps are on Humanity's Last Exam, where Qwen3.5 27B scores 48.5% against 11.7%; BrowseComp, where Qwen3.5 27B scores 61.0% against 37.0%. Averaged across everything we track, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) sits at 45.3% and Qwen3.5 27B at 70.3%.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is available through an API at $0.05 per million input tokens with a 262K-token context window. We do not track a hosted API for Qwen3.5 27B, so pricing and context cannot be compared directly.
| Characteristic | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Company | NVIDIA | Alibaba |
| Release Date | August 11, 2026 | March 1, 2026 |
| Parameters | 30B | 27B |
| Multimodal | No | No |
| Context (input) | 262K | — |
| Context (output) | 262K | — |
| Input Price / 1M | $0.05 | — |
| Output Price / 1M | $0.20 | — |
| Average Score | 45.3% | 70.3% |
| Benchmarks | ||
| Humanity's Last Exam | 11.7% | 48.5% |
| BrowseComp | 37.0% | 61.0% |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 51.6% | 72.4% |
| AA-LCR | 52.0% | 66.1% |
| GPQA | 75.0% | 85.5% |
| IFBench | 72.0% | 76.5% |
| MMLU-Pro | 82.0% | 86.1% |
Visual Benchmark Comparison
Verdict
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) leads in 1 out of 3 comparison categories.
Both models show comparable average scores: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5, Qwen3.5 27B — 0.7.
On SWE-Bench, both models are nearly equal: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5, Qwen3.5 27B — 0.7.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is newer: released 8/11/2026 vs 3/1/2026.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.5 27B?
Which model is cheaper — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.5 27B?
Which has a larger context window — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.5 27B?
The Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3.5 27B comparison is updated for 2026. Data includes benchmark results, API pricing, context window size and other specifications. For more detailed information, visit the Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.5 27B page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.