Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA or Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) 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 27B (Medium) scores 14.7 points higher (27.6 vs 12.9) but costs 13× as much to run the benchmark ($1165 vs $92.8; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.9 | 27.6 | +114.0% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 2.1× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $92.76 | $1,165.00 | +1155.9% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 13× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.97s | 57.62s | +542.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 542.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.20 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 114.0% more intelligence, 1155.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 542.4% 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.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Nemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.8 27B (Medium)Today'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/qwen3-8-27b-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill