The AI arena is free today

Open Superagent

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking are closely matched at 22.1 and 23.5 on the LLM Stats Score.

NVIDIA · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 22.1 and 23.5.

The models split the 2 individual benchmarks reported for both models evenly.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)

  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Aug 2026

Choose Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking

  • you are already invested in the Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team ecosystem

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
NVIDIA
Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
22.1
#182
23.5
#177
Reasoning
19.6
#200
24.7
#157
Agents
6.8
#143
12.9
#100
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
1 of 2
1 of 2
Input price
$0.08 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.20 / M
— / M
Context window
262,144
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking
Math
17.9#189
25.4#111
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

13 reported for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) · 47 for Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking

2 shared

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) outperforms in 1 benchmarks (GPQA), while Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking is better at 1 benchmark (MMLU-Pro).

Both models are evenly matched across the benchmarks.

Tue Sep 22 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

3.0B diff

Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking has 3.0B more parameters than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B), making it 10.0% larger.

NVIDIA
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
30.0Bparameters
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking
33.0Bparameters
30.0B
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
33.0B
Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) specifies input context (262,144 tokens). Only Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) specifies output context (262,144 tokens).

NVIDIA
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
Input262,144 tokens
Output262,144 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Tue Sep 22 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking supports multimodal inputs, whereas Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) does not.

Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is licensed under OpenMDW License v1.1, while Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking uses Apache 2.0.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)

OpenMDW License v1.1

Open weights

Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) was released on 2026-08-11, while Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking was released on 2025-09-22.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is 11 months newer than Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)

Aug 11, 2026

1 months ago

10mo newer
Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking

Sep 22, 2025

1.0 years ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
✓ Preferred
Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking.

Which is better, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking are closely matched on the LLM Stats Score at 22.1 and 23.5. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is made by NVIDIA and Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking is made by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) compare to Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking in benchmarks?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) scores PinchBench: 85.4%, MMLU-Pro: 81.9%, GPQA: 75.4%, IFBench: 71.9%, AA-LCR: 52.0%. Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking scores DocVQAtest: 96.1%, ScreenSpot: 95.7%, MMLU-Redux: 91.9%, MMBench-V1.1: 90.8%, CharXiv-D: 90.2%.

What are the context window sizes for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) supports 262K tokens and Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (22.1 vs 23.5), multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (OpenMDW License v1.1 vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is developed by NVIDIA and Qwen3 VL 32B Thinking is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

Related comparisons