Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Which is better for the money: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA or Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 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-Flash-Next scores 26.9 points higher (39.8 vs 12.9) but costs 3.9× as much to run the benchmark ($363 vs $92.8; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8-Flash-Next when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3.8-Flash-Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.9 | 39.8 | +208.5% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 3.1× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $92.76 | $362.72 | +291.0% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 3.9× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.97s | 50.51s | +463.1% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 463.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.20 | $0.15 / $0.47 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 208.5% more intelligence, 291.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 463.1% 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-Flash-Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Nemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.8-Flash-NextToday'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-flash-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/qwen3-8-flash-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill