Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA or Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) scores 5.5 points higher (18.4 vs 12.9) but costs 10× as much to run the benchmark ($941 vs $92.6; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.9 | 18.4 | +42.6% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 42.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $92.58 | $940.97 | +916.4% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 10× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.73s | 65.86s | +654.4% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 654.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.20 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 42.6% more intelligence, 916.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 654.4% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) scores 34.60 for $66.8.
- Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Nemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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