Model comparison
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra vs Qwen 3.8 Max
NVIDIA against Qwen, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.
Catalog record checked September 3, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below
NVIDIA
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra
Frontier · Open weights
Qwen
Qwen 3.8 Max
Frontier · Open weights
| Specification | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra | Qwen 3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | Qwen |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context window | Winner: 1M | 991K |
| Max output | Not verifiedUnverified | 131K |
| Input / 1M tokens | Winner: $0.50 | $2 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Winner: $2.20 | $6 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Parameters | 550B total / 55B active (MoE) | 2.4T total / 95B active (MoE) |
| Reasoning levels | low, high, max | low, high, max |
| Modalities | text | text, image, video |
| API model id | nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b | qwen3.8-max |
| Released | June 4, 2026 | August 3, 2026 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14) | 54 | Winner: 58 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-08-03) | Not verifiedUnverified | 86.6 |
| GPQA Diamond (2026-08-03) | Not verifiedUnverified | 92.6 |
| Humanity's Last Exam (2026-08-14) | Not verifiedUnverified | 56.2 |
| SWE-bench Verified (2026-09-01) | Not verifiedUnverified | 85.6 |
Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.
Benchmark receipts
- 2026-09-01: vals.ai SWE-bench Verified leaderboard (independent, mini-swe-agent bash-only); not published by Qwen (official used SWE-bench Pro 67.7)Real GitHub issue resolution: does the model's patch pass the hidden tests. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Post-audit vendor claims and pre-audit scores sit on different task trust levels; scaffolding (agent harness, compute budget) also dominates results. Never aggregate across scaffolds.
- 2026-08-14: Z.ai GLM-5.3 blog (independent Z.ai-run, with tools; Qwen official no-tools 43.6 — both preserved)Frontier-knowledge ceiling: extremely hard multi-domain questions written to be near-impossible without deep expertise. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Subset/tool configurations (text-only vs with-tools) differ between vendors and materially change scores; must match configuration to compare.
- 2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
- 2026-08-03: Qwen official blog (vendor-run table)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
Pricing tiers: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra: Open weights (weights + data + recipes); $0.50/$2.20 per MTok is the third-party hosted rate (OpenRouter). 550B/55B MoE. · Qwen 3.8 Max: $2/$6 per MTok (Alibaba Cloud Model Studio). Weights announced open, verify they have dropped.
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra
Nemotron 3 Ultra is NVIDIA's open-weight (550B/55B) frontier MoE with a 1M-token context.
Best for
- Open-weight frontier
- Self-hosting on NVIDIA GPUs
- Reasoning
Watch out
Top US open-weight until Thinking Machines Inkling; verify hosted pricing.
Qwen 3.8 Max
Qwen 3.8 Max is Alibaba's flagship — 2.4T MoE with 1M-class context, near frontier on the Intelligence Index.
Best for
- Open-weight frontier work
- Long-context
- Multimodal
Watch out
Open weights dropped 2026-08-12 under a custom (non-Apache) licence with vision and 1M-context stripped from the open checkpoint — the open checkpoint is not the full API model. Verify the licence before commercial use.
When the cheaper one wins
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is cheaper on output at $2.20 per million tokens against $6 for Qwen 3.8 Max — about 2.7×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.
Run the model pickerEvidence confidence: High
How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.
- Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
- 4/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output.
- 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
- Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 8 days ago.
- Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.
Source receipts
Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra: NVIDIA — Nemotron (accessed 2026-08-29)
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra (accessed 2026-08-29)
- Qwen 3.8 Max: Qwen — Qwen 3.8 Max (accessed 2026-08-29)
- Qwen 3.8 Max: Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (accessed 2026-08-29)
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- Claude Mythos 5.1 vs Qwen 3.8 Max
Diving deeper on one model? NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra · Qwen 3.8 Max
Common questions
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra vs Qwen 3.8 Max
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra or Qwen 3.8 Max cheaper for input?
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is cheaper at $0.50 per million input tokens, against $2 for Qwen 3.8 Max — roughly 4.0× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra has tiered pricing: Open weights (weights + data + recipes); $0.50/$2.20 per MTok is the third-party hosted rate (OpenRouter). 550B/55B MoE. Qwen 3.8 Max has tiered pricing: $2/$6 per MTok (Alibaba Cloud Model Studio). Weights announced open, verify they have dropped.
Is NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra or Qwen 3.8 Max cheaper for output?
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is cheaper at $2.20 per million output tokens, against $6 for Qwen 3.8 Max — roughly 2.7× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra has tiered pricing: Open weights (weights + data + recipes); $0.50/$2.20 per MTok is the third-party hosted rate (OpenRouter). 550B/55B MoE. Qwen 3.8 Max has tiered pricing: $2/$6 per MTok (Alibaba Cloud Model Studio). Weights announced open, verify they have dropped.
Which has the larger context window, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra or Qwen 3.8 Max?
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra accepts 1M tokens against 991K for Qwen 3.8 Max. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Do NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra and Qwen 3.8 Max support the same reasoning levels?
Yes — both accept the same effort settings: "low", "high", "max". Higher effort costs more and takes longer, so start low and raise it only where output quality actually improves.
Should I use NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra or Qwen 3.8 Max?
Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra suits open-weight frontier; Qwen 3.8 Max suits open-weight frontier work.
Next step
Choosing between them
The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.
- Input price: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra costs $0.50 per 1M tokens versus $2 for Qwen 3.8 Max — a 4x difference at the headline tier.
- Context: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra takes 1M against 991K for Qwen 3.8 Max — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
- Measured capability: Qwen 3.8 Max leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 58 to 54 (measured 2026-08-14).
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