NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) by NVIDIA or Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) scores 12.5 points higher (21.4 vs 8.9) but costs 18× as much to run the benchmark ($1145 vs $63.7; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoni… when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) | Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 8.9 | 21.4 | +140.4% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 2.4× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $63.74 | $1,145.36 | +1696.9% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 18× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 10.10s | 110.87s | +997.7% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 997.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.05 / $0.20 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning): 140.4% more intelligence, 1696.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 997.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) scores 34.50 for $56.4.
- Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)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/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning/qwen3-6-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning/qwen3-6-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill