Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3.8 Max
Which is better for the money: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA or Qwen3.8 Max by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 Max scores 27.3 points higher (40.2 vs 12.9) but costs 34× as much to run the benchmark ($3172 vs $92.8; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max when you need intelligence above 12.9, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning when 12.9 is enough.
| Metric | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Qwen3.8 Max | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.9 | 40.2 | +211.6% Qwen3.8 Max is 3.1× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $92.76 | $3,172.37 | +3320.0% Qwen3.8 Max is 34× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.98s | 62.87s | +600.1% Qwen3.8 Max is 600.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.20 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 Max vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 211.6% more intelligence, 3320.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 600.1% 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 Max is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Nemotron 3.5 LightningQwen3.8 MaxToday'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-max-0803 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/qwen3-8-max-0803?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill