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Comparison · 3 models · Updated Oct 4, 2026

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B vs Qwen3.6 27B vs Qwen3.6 Plus

Too close to call on our weighted score (Qwen3.6 Plus 66, Qwen3.6 27B 65, Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 62). The right pick depends on what you value most.

  1. NVIDIA

    Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B

    Released Jun 4, 2026

    62/100
    • ECI146.2
    • Price$0.50 / $2.50
    • Context1M
    Full specs Remove Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B

  2. Alibaba (Qwen)

    Qwen3.6 27B

    Released Apr 22, 2026

    65/100
    • ECI146.5
    • Price$0.60 / $3.60
    • Context262K
    Full specs Remove Qwen3.6 27B

  3. Alibaba (Qwen)

    Qwen3.6 Plus

    Released Apr 2, 2026

    66/100
    • ECI147.6
    • Price$0.50 / $3.00
    • Context1M
    Full specs Remove Qwen3.6 Plus
01 — Verdict

Too close to call

It is close. Our weighted score puts them within 1 points (Qwen3.6 Plus 66/100, Qwen3.6 27B 65/100, Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 62/100), so choose by what matters most for your work: Qwen3.6 Plus for raw capability and Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B on price. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

  • CapabilityQwen3.6 PlusCapabilities Index (ECI): Qwen3.6 Plus 147.6 · Qwen3.6 27B 146.5 · Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 146.2
  • Lowest priceNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55BNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B $1.00 · Qwen3.6 Plus $1.13 · Qwen3.6 27B $1.35 per 1M tokens (3:1 blend)
  • Longest contextNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B and Qwen3.6 PlusNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 1,000,000 · Qwen3.6 Plus 1,000,000 · Qwen3.6 27B 262,144 tokens
  • Widest inputsQwen3.6 27BNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B: Text · Qwen3.6 27B: Text, Images, Audio, Video · Qwen3.6 Plus: Text, Images, Video
  • Self-hostingNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B and Qwen3.6 27BPublishes downloadable weights
How the score is built
MeasureWeightNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55BQwen3.6 27BQwen3.6 Plus
CapabilityCapabilities Index (ECI)50%737475
Price25%504447
Inputs & features15%459070
Context window10%603760
Overall100%62/10065/10066/100
02 — Side by side

Every spec in one table

Highlighted cells lead their row. Dashes mean the data is not published.

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B vs Qwen3.6 27B vs Qwen3.6 Plus specifications side by side
SpecificationNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55BNVIDIAQwen3.6 27BAlibaba (Qwen)Qwen3.6 PlusAlibaba (Qwen)
Capability
Capabilities Index (ECI)146.2146.5147.6 (best)
ECI rank#70 of 148#68 of 148#59 of 148 (best)
GPQA DiamondGraduate-level science questions85.4%85.9%88.4% (best)
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3Research-level mathematics—35.1%38.3% (best)
OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025Competition mathematics86.7%91.1%93.3% (best)
SWE-bench VerifiedFixing real GitHub issues——57.9%
SimpleQA VerifiedShort factual questions——44.1%
Price per million tokens
Input$0.50 (best)$0.60$0.50 (best)
Output$2.50 (best)$3.60$3.00
Cached input$0.15—$0.05 (best)
Blended (3:1)$1.00 (best)$1.35$1.13
Long-context rateSame rateSame rateOver 256K: $2.00 / $6.00
Price sourceOfficial Nvidia APIOfficial Alibaba APIOfficial Alibaba API
Limits
Context window1,000,000 tokens (best)262,144 tokens1,000,000 tokens (best)
Max output128,000 tokens (best)65,536 tokens65,536 tokens
Inputs and features
TextYesYesYes
ImagesNoYesYes
PDFsNoNoNo
AudioNoYesNo
VideoNoYesYes
ReasoningYesYesYes
Tool callingYesYesYes
Structured outputYesYesNo
Availability
WeightsOpenOpenProprietary
API model IDnvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55bqwen3.6-27bqwen3.6-plus
API providers2127 (best)18
ReleasedJun 4, 2026Apr 22, 2026Apr 2, 2026
Knowledge cutoff——Apr 2025
03 — Cost

What would a month cost?

Enter your expected volume in millions of tokens. List prices only; caching and batch discounts would lower these.

  • Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B$10.00
  • Qwen3.6 27B$13.20
  • Qwen3.6 Plus$11.00
04 — Questions

Which should you choose?

Which is better: Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B, Qwen3.6 27B or Qwen3.6 Plus?

It is close. Our weighted score puts them within 1 points (Qwen3.6 Plus 66/100, Qwen3.6 27B 65/100, Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 62/100), so choose by what matters most for your work: Qwen3.6 Plus for raw capability and Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B on price. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Which is cheaper, Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B, Qwen3.6 27B or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B is cheaper at $0.50 input / $2.50 output per million tokens (official Nvidia API price). Qwen3.6 Plus costs $0.50 input / $3.00 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price); Qwen3.6 27B costs $0.60 input / $3.60 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $1.00 per million tokens for Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B versus $1.13 for Qwen3.6 Plus (1.1× as much) and $1.35 for Qwen3.6 27B (1.4× as much).

Which scores higher on benchmarks?

Qwen3.6 Plus scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Qwen3.6 Plus 147.6 (#59 of 148), Qwen3.6 27B 146.5 (#68 of 148) and Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 146.2 (#70 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (145.4–149.3 vs 144.2–147.9), so treat the gap as small. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — Qwen3.6 Plus 88.4%, Qwen3.6 27B 85.9%, Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 85.4%; OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025 — Qwen3.6 Plus 93.3%, Qwen3.6 27B 91.1%, Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 86.7%.

Which is better for coding?

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B and Qwen3.6 27B yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Qwen3.6 Plus leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

Which has the bigger context window?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B and Qwen3.6 Plus have the largest context windows (1,000,000 and 1,000,000 tokens), against 262,144 for Qwen3.6 27B. Maximum output per response: Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B up to 128,000, Qwen3.6 27B up to 65,536, Qwen3.6 Plus up to 65,536 tokens.

Which can read images, PDFs, audio or video?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B accepts text; Qwen3.6 27B accepts text, images, audio and video; Qwen3.6 Plus accepts text, images and video. Qwen3.6 27B handles the widest range of inputs.

Are any of these open source?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B and Qwen3.6 27B publishes its weights and can be self-hosted; Qwen3.6 Plus is proprietary.

Which is newer?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B is the newest, released Jun 4, 2026. Qwen3.6 27B came out Apr 22, 2026; Qwen3.6 Plus came out Apr 2, 2026. Knowledge cutoff: Qwen3.6 Plus Apr 2025.

How do you decide the winner?

Each model gets a 0–100 score on capability (50%, independent benchmark results); price (25%, blended price per million tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scale); inputs & features (15%, image, PDF, audio and video input, tool calling, structured output and reasoning); context window (10%, maximum tokens per request, log scale). Dimensions missing for any model are dropped and the remaining weights rescaled, so every model is judged on the same evidence. Specs and prices come from public model listings and the labs’ own API pages; capability scores come from independent benchmark runs. Data updated Oct 4, 2026.

05 — Keep comparing

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