Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3.6-27B: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is developed by NVIDIA, while Qwen3.6-27B comes from Alibaba. Qwen3.6-27B was released in April 2026, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) followed 4 months later in August 2026. The two are similar in size, at about 30 billion and 28 billion parameters respectively.
The two models share 5 published benchmarks. Qwen3.6-27B leads on 5 of them. The widest gaps are on SWE-bench Multilingual, where Qwen3.6-27B scores 71.3% against 39.3%; SWE-Bench Verified, where Qwen3.6-27B scores 77.2% against 51.6%. Averaged across everything we track, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) sits at 45.3% and Qwen3.6-27B at 77.5%.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is the cheaper API at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens, roughly 12 times cheaper than Qwen3.6-27B at $0.60 and $3.60. Both accept a context window of about 262K tokens. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) accepts text as input, while Qwen3.6-27B accepts text and images.
| Characteristic | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) | Qwen3.6-27B |
|---|---|---|
| Company | NVIDIA | Alibaba |
| Release Date | August 11, 2026 | April 21, 2026 |
| Parameters | 30B | 28B |
| Multimodal | No | Yes |
| Context (input) | 262K | 262K |
| Context (output) | 262K | 66K |
| Input Price / 1M | $0.05 | $0.60 |
| Output Price / 1M | $0.20 | $3.60 |
| Average Score | 45.3% | 77.5% |
| Benchmarks | ||
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 39.3% | 71.3% |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 51.6% | 77.2% |
| GPQA | 75.0% | 87.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 11.7% | 24.0% |
| MMLU-Pro | 82.0% | 86.2% |
Visual Benchmark Comparison
Verdict
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) leads in 2 out of 5 comparison categories.
Both models show comparable average scores: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5, Qwen3.6-27B — 0.8.
On SWE-Bench, both models are nearly equal: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5, Qwen3.6-27B — 0.8.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is 16.8x cheaper: input $0.05/1M vs $0.60/1M tokens.
Qwen3.6-27B supports a larger context: 262K vs 262K tokens.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is newer: released 8/11/2026 vs 4/21/2026.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.6-27B?
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Which has a larger context window — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.6-27B?
The Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3.6-27B 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 Qwen3.6-27B page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.