Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B
Which is better for the money: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA or Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B 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
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B scores 27.0 points higher (39.9 vs 12.9) but costs 28× as much to run the benchmark ($2632 vs $92.6; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.9 | 39.9 | +209.3% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 3.1× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $92.58 | $2,632.05 | +2743.0% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 28× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.73s | 64.84s | +642.7% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 642.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.20 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 209.3% more intelligence, 2743.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 642.7% 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.
- Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Nemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.8 2.4T A95BToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/qwen3-8-2-4t-a95b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/qwen3-8-2-4t-a95b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill