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Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

NVIDIA · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is better at 5 benchmarks (GPQA, Humanity's Last Exam, MMLU-Pro, SWE-bench Multilingual, SWE-Bench Verified). Qwen3.6-35B-A3B significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Based on current benchmark, 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 Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

  • you want the strongest raw capability — it leads on 5 of 5 shared benchmarks

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
NVIDIA
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Benchmark wins
0 of 5
5 of 5
Input price
$0.05 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.20 / M
— / M
Context window
262,144
—
Released
Aug 2026
Apr 2026
License
OpenMDW License v1.1
Apache 2.0

Performance Benchmarks

Comparative analysis across standard metrics

5 benchmarks

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is better at 5 benchmarks (GPQA, Humanity's Last Exam, MMLU-Pro, SWE-bench Multilingual, SWE-Bench Verified).

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Wed Aug 26 2026 • llm-stats.com

Arena Performance

Playground indexes and blind preference scores

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

5.0B diff

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has 5.0B more parameters than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B), making it 16.7% larger.

NVIDIA
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
30.0Bparameters
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
35.0Bparameters
30.0B
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
35.0B
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

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
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Wed Aug 26 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input Capabilities

Supported data types and modalities

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B supports multimodal inputs, whereas Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) does not.

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B 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

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is licensed under OpenMDW License v1.1, while Qwen3.6-35B-A3B 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

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

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 Qwen3.6-35B-A3B was released on 2026-04-16.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is 4 months newer than Qwen3.6-35B-A3B.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)

Aug 11, 2026

2 weeks ago

3mo newer
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Apr 16, 2026

4 months 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 Qwen3.6-35B-A3B side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
✓ Preferred
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B.

Which is better, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B significantly outperforms across most benchmarks. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is made by NVIDIA and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is made by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their benchmark scores, pricing, and capabilities above.

How does Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) compare to Qwen3.6-35B-A3B 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%. Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores MMLU-Redux: 93.3%, MMBench-V1.1: 92.8%, AI2D: 92.7%, AIME 2026: 92.7%, RefCOCO-avg: 92.0%.

What are the context window sizes for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) supports 262K tokens and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B 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 Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Key differences include 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 Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is developed by NVIDIA and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

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