AI model comparison
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3.5-9B
Pricing, context window, benchmarks, and features compared side by side. Or skip the guesswork and send one prompt to both.
NVIDIA
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is an open mixture-of-experts model from NVIDIA, with 3B active parameters out of 30B total.
- Input / 1M
- $0.05
- Output / 1M
- $0.13
- Context
- 262K
Qwen
Qwen3.5-9B
Qwen3.5-9B is a multimodal foundation model from the Qwen3.5 family, designed to deliver strong reasoning, coding, and visual understanding in an efficient 9B-parameter architecture.
Qwen3.5-9B is scheduled to be retired on October 21, 2026. Consider Qwen3.8 27B instead.
- Input / 1M
- $0.10
- Output / 1M
- $0.15
- Context
- 262K
At a glance
Quick verdict
How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.
Lower price
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
1.7x cheaper for a typical chat
Higher intelligence score
Qwen3.5-9B
13.3 vs 12.9 on Artificial Analysis
Larger context window
Tie
262K vs 262K tokens
Newer release
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Released August 11, 2026
Benchmarks
Benchmark scores
Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.
Intelligence index
Qwen3.5-9B13.3Coding index
Qwen3.5-9B23.5Agentic index
Qwen3.5-9BNot availablePricing
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Qwen3.5-9B API pricing
Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.
| Metric | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Input tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.05 | $0.10 |
| Output tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.13 | $0.15 |
| Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens | $0.02 | Not available |
| Cache writePer 1M tokens | Not available | Not available |
What it costs in practice
Estimated cost per 1,000 requests at standard rates. Coding and long-document figures also show the cost when the input is already cached.
Chat message
2K in, 500 out
Qwen3.5-9B$0.27Coding task
30K in, 4K out
Qwen3.5-9B$3.60Long document summary
150K in, 2K out
Qwen3.5-9B$15.30Specs
Context window and capabilities
How much each model can read, how much it can write, and what it accepts as input.
| Metric | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 262K tokens | 262K tokens |
| Max output | 131K tokens | 33K tokens |
| Input types | Text | Image, Text, Video |
| Output types | Text | Text |
| Reasoning effort levels | Not available | Not available |
| Default reasoning effort | Not available | Not available |
| Release date | August 11, 2026 | March 10, 2026 |
Features
Supported features
API features available for each model.
| Metric | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Tool calling | Supported | Supported |
| Structured outputs | Supported | Supported |
| JSON mode | Supported | Supported |
| Reasoning | Supported | Supported |
| Temperature | Supported | Supported |
| Stop sequences | Supported | Supported |
| Deterministic seed | Supported | Supported |
| Verbosity control | Not supported | Not supported |
Keep exploring
More on these models
Other head-to-heads, the full model page, and the alternatives list for each model.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs gpt-oss-120b
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Gemma 4 31B
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs gpt-oss-20b
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs GPT-5 Nano
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Mercury 2.5
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Nemotron 3 Super
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Granite 4.2 8B
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B
Our take
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 1.7x cheaper for a typical chat. Qwen3.5-9B scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (13.3 vs 12.9). The right pick depends on your workload, so the quickest way to settle it is to send the same prompt to both and compare.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen3.5-9B cheaper?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs $0.05 per 1M input tokens and $0.13 per 1M output tokens, while Qwen3.5-9B costs $0.10 per 1M input tokens and $0.15 per 1M output tokens.
Which has a bigger context window, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Qwen3.5-9B?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning supports up to 262K tokens of context, compared with 262K for Qwen3.5-9B.
Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning smarter than Qwen3.5-9B?
On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores 12.9 and Qwen3.5-9B scores 13.3, putting Qwen3.5-9B ahead. Benchmarks don't capture everything, so the best test is running your own prompts through both.
Can I use Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen3.5-9B at the same time?
Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen3.5-9B answer side by side and keep the better response.
Why choose? Ask both.
Send one prompt to Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Qwen3.5-9B at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.