Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3.8 Flash: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is developed by NVIDIA, while Qwen3.8 Flash comes from Alibaba. Both were released in August 2026. Qwen3.8 Flash is the larger model at roughly 125 billion parameters, against 30 billion for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B).
The two models share 4 published benchmarks. Qwen3.8 Flash leads on 4 of them. The widest gaps are on SWE-bench Multilingual, where Qwen3.8 Flash scores 81.0% against 39.3%; Humanity's Last Exam, where Qwen3.8 Flash scores 35.9% against 11.7%. Averaged across everything we track, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) sits at 45.3% and Qwen3.8 Flash at 68.5%.
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 3 times cheaper than Qwen3.8 Flash at $0.15 and $0.47. Qwen3.8 Flash 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 Qwen3.8 Flash accepts text, images, and video. On tooling, only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) supports function calling and only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) offers structured output.
| Characteristic | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) | Qwen3.8 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Company | NVIDIA | Alibaba |
| Release Date | August 11, 2026 | August 26, 2026 |
| Parameters | 30B | 125B |
| Multimodal | No | Yes |
| Context (input) | 262K | 1.0M |
| Context (output) | 262K | 131K |
| Input Price / 1M | $0.05 | $0.15 |
| Output Price / 1M | $0.20 | $0.47 |
| Average Score | 45.3% | 68.5% |
| Benchmarks | ||
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 39.3% | 81.0% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 11.7% | 35.9% |
| GPQA | 75.0% | 91.7% |
| IFBench | 72.0% | 81.3% |
Visual Benchmark Comparison
Verdict
Qwen3.8 Flash leads in 2 out of 4 comparison categories.
Both models show comparable average scores: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5, Qwen3.8 Flash — 0.7.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is 2.5x cheaper: input $0.05/1M vs $0.15/1M tokens.
Qwen3.8 Flash supports a larger context: 1M vs 262K tokens.
Qwen3.8 Flash is newer: released 8/26/2026 vs 8/11/2026.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.8 Flash?
Which model is cheaper — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.8 Flash?
Which has a larger context window — Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.8 Flash?
The Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3.8 Flash 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 Flash page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.