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Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3.8-27B

Qwen3.8-27B 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 Qwen3.8-27B is better at 4 benchmarks (GPQA, Humanity's Last Exam, IFBench, Terminal-Bench 2.1). Qwen3.8-27B significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Based on current benchmark, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)

  • you want predictable pricing at $0.05/M input and $0.20/M output

Choose Qwen3.8-27B

  • you want the strongest raw capability — it leads on 4 of 4 shared benchmarks
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Aug 2026

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
NVIDIA
Qwen3.8-27B
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Benchmark wins
0 of 4
4 of 4
Input price
$0.05 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.20 / M
— / M
Context window
262,144
—
Released
Aug 2026
Aug 2026
License
OpenMDW License v1.1
Apache 2.0

Performance Benchmarks

Comparative analysis across standard metrics

4 benchmarks

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Qwen3.8-27B is better at 4 benchmarks (GPQA, Humanity's Last Exam, IFBench, Terminal-Bench 2.1).

Qwen3.8-27B 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

2.2B diff

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) has 2.2B more parameters than Qwen3.8-27B, making it 8.0% larger.

NVIDIA
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
30.0Bparameters
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3.8-27B
27.8Bparameters
30.0B
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
27.8B
Qwen3.8-27B

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
Qwen3.8-27B
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Wed Aug 26 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input Capabilities

Supported data types and modalities

Qwen3.8-27B supports multimodal inputs, whereas Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) does not.

Qwen3.8-27B 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

Qwen3.8-27B

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is licensed under OpenMDW License v1.1, while Qwen3.8-27B 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

Qwen3.8-27B

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 Qwen3.8-27B was released on 2026-08-14.

Qwen3.8-27B is 0 month newer than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B).

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)

Aug 11, 2026

2 weeks ago

Qwen3.8-27B

Aug 14, 2026

1 weeks ago

3d newer

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 Qwen3.8-27B side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
✓ Preferred
Qwen3.8-27B
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) vs Qwen3.8-27B.

Which is better, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) or Qwen3.8-27B?

Qwen3.8-27B significantly outperforms across most benchmarks. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is made by NVIDIA and Qwen3.8-27B 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 Qwen3.8-27B 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%. Qwen3.8-27B scores MathVision: 94.6%, OmniDocBench 1.5: 91.1%, LiveCodeBench v6: 90.3%, CharXiv-R: 90.2%, GPQA: 89.2%.

What are the context window sizes for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) and Qwen3.8-27B?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) supports 262K tokens and Qwen3.8-27B 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 Qwen3.8-27B?

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 Qwen3.8-27B?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is developed by NVIDIA and Qwen3.8-27B is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

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