Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA or Qwen3.6 27B (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
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) scores 8.5 points higher (21.4 vs 12.9) but costs 12× as much to run the benchmark ($1145 vs $92.8; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.9 | 21.4 | +65.9% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 65.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $92.76 | $1,145.36 | +1134.8% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 12× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.97s | 111.39s | +1141.8% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 1141.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.20 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 65.9% more intelligence, 1134.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1141.8% 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.
- Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Nemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/qwen3-6-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/qwen3-6-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill