Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3.8-27B: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is developed by NVIDIA, while Qwen3.8-27B comes from Alibaba. Both were released in August 2026. The two are similar in size, at about 30 billion and 28 billion parameters respectively.
The two models share 4 published benchmarks. Qwen3.8-27B leads on 4 of them. The widest gaps are on Terminal-Bench 2.1, where Qwen3.8-27B scores 73.0% against 24.6%; Humanity's Last Exam, where Qwen3.8-27B scores 30.8% against 11.7%. Averaged across everything we track, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) sits at 45.3% and Qwen3.8-27B at 66.3%.
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 Qwen3.8-27B, so pricing and context cannot be compared directly.
| Characteristic | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) | Qwen3.8-27B |
|---|---|---|
| Company | NVIDIA | Alibaba |
| Release Date | August 11, 2026 | August 14, 2026 |
| Parameters | 30B | 28B |
| Multimodal | No | Yes |
| Context (input) | 262K | — |
| Context (output) | 262K | — |
| Input Price / 1M | $0.05 | — |
| Output Price / 1M | $0.20 | — |
| Average Score | 45.3% | 66.3% |
| Benchmarks | ||
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 24.6% | 73.0% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 11.7% | 30.8% |
| GPQA | 75.0% | 89.2% |
| IFBench | 72.0% | 79.5% |
Visual Benchmark Comparison
Verdict
Both models show equal results — the choice depends on your specific use case.
Both models show comparable average scores: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5, Qwen3.8-27B — 0.7.
Both models were released around the same time: 8/11/2026 and 8/14/2026.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.8-27B?
Which model is cheaper — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.8-27B?
Which has a larger context window — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.8-27B?
The Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3.8-27B 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 Qwen3.8-27B page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.