Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3.6 Plus: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is developed by NVIDIA, while Qwen3.6 Plus comes from Alibaba. Qwen3.6 Plus was released in March 2026, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) followed 5 months later in August 2026. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) has a published size of about 30 billion parameters; Alibaba has not disclosed the parameter count of Qwen3.6 Plus.
The two models share 7 published benchmarks. Qwen3.6 Plus leads on 7 of them. The widest gaps are on SWE-bench Multilingual, where Qwen3.6 Plus scores 73.8% against 39.3%; SWE-Bench Verified, where Qwen3.6 Plus scores 78.8% against 51.6%. Averaged across everything we track, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) sits at 45.3% and Qwen3.6 Plus at 74.5%.
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 10 times cheaper than Qwen3.6 Plus at $0.50 and $3. Qwen3.6 Plus takes the larger context window at 1M tokens, compared with 262K for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B). Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) accepts text as input, while Qwen3.6 Plus accepts text and images.
| Characteristic | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Company | NVIDIA | Alibaba |
| Release Date | August 11, 2026 | March 31, 2026 |
| Parameters | 30B | — |
| Multimodal | No | Yes |
| Context (input) | 262K | 1.0M |
| Context (output) | 262K | 66K |
| Input Price / 1M | $0.05 | $0.50 |
| Output Price / 1M | $0.20 | $3.00 |
| Average Score | 45.3% | 74.5% |
| Benchmarks | ||
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 39.3% | 73.8% |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 51.6% | 78.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 11.7% | 28.8% |
| AA-LCR | 52.0% | 68.3% |
| GPQA | 75.0% | 90.4% |
| MMLU-Pro | 82.0% | 88.5% |
| IFBench | 72.0% | 74.2% |
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 Plus — 0.7.
On SWE-Bench, both models are nearly equal: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5, Qwen3.6 Plus — 0.8.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is 14.0x cheaper: input $0.05/1M vs $0.50/1M tokens.
Qwen3.6 Plus supports a larger context: 1M vs 262K tokens.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is newer: released 8/11/2026 vs 3/31/2026.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Which model is cheaper — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Which has a larger context window — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.6 Plus?
The Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3.6 Plus 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 Plus page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.