Model comparison
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra vs Qwen3-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
Qwen3-Max
Frontier
| Specification | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra | Qwen3-Max |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | NVIDIA | Qwen |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context window | Winner: 1M | 262K |
| Max output | Not verifiedUnverified | 66K |
| Input / 1M tokens | Winner: $0.50 | $1.20 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Winner: $2.20 | $6 |
| Weights | Open | Closed |
| Parameters | 550B total / 55B active (MoE) | 1T (proprietary) |
| Reasoning levels | low, high, max | low, high, max |
| Modalities | text | text, image, video |
| API model id | nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b | qwen3-max |
| Released | June 4, 2026 | September 23, 2025 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14) | Winner: 54 | 52 |
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
- 2026-08-14: 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).
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. · Qwen3-Max: Qwen API $1.20/$6.00 per MTok (≤32K); higher tiers for 32K–256K. OpenRouter lists ~$0.78/$3.90. Proprietary, API-only.
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.
Qwen3-Max
Qwen3-Max is Alibaba's proprietary 1-trillion-parameter API model with multimodal input.
Best for
- Agentic coding
- Multimodal knowledge work
- Long-context via API
Watch out
Max line is proprietary/API-only (no published weights). Per-provider prices differ.
When the cheaper one wins
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is cheaper on output at $2.20 per million tokens against $6 for Qwen3-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)
- Qwen3-Max: OpenRouter — Qwen3-Max (accessed 2026-08-29)
- Qwen3-Max: AI Release Tracker — Qwen3-Max (accessed 2026-08-29)
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Diving deeper on one model? NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra · Qwen3-Max
Common questions
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra vs Qwen3-Max
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra or Qwen3-Max cheaper for input?
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is cheaper at $0.50 per million input tokens, against $1.20 for Qwen3-Max — roughly 2.4× 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. Qwen3-Max has tiered pricing: Qwen API $1.20/$6.00 per MTok (≤32K); higher tiers for 32K–256K. OpenRouter lists ~$0.78/$3.90. Proprietary, API-only.
Is NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra or Qwen3-Max cheaper for output?
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is cheaper at $2.20 per million output tokens, against $6 for Qwen3-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. Qwen3-Max has tiered pricing: Qwen API $1.20/$6.00 per MTok (≤32K); higher tiers for 32K–256K. OpenRouter lists ~$0.78/$3.90. Proprietary, API-only.
Which has the larger context window, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra or Qwen3-Max?
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra accepts 1M tokens against 262K for Qwen3-Max. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Do NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra and Qwen3-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 Qwen3-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; Qwen3-Max suits agentic coding.
Can I self-host NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra or Qwen3-Max?
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Qwen3-Max is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.
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 $1.20 for Qwen3-Max — a 2.4x difference at the headline tier.
- Context: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra takes 1M against 262K for Qwen3-Max — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
- Measured capability: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 54 to 52 (measured 2026-08-14).
- Deployment: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
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