Pick NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super for high-throughput agentic reasoning (up to 2.2x gpt-oss-120b) or 1m-token context with strong long-context retrieval (91.6% ruler @ 1m). Pick Qwen3.6 27B for the best open coding score in its family — 77.2% on swe-bench verified, beating alibaba's own 397b mixture-of-experts at a fifteenth of the size or dense, so quality per gigabyte of vram is high: it fits one consumer gpu when quantised.
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super (NVIDIA, US) and Qwen3.6 27B (Alibaba, China) line up two different AI ecosystems against each other — a comparison that is as much about cost philosophy and openness as raw capability. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super is nVIDIA's open 120B-total/12B-active hybrid Mamba-Transformer MoE built for high-throughput agentic reasoning at 1M-token context. Qwen3.6 27B is a dense 27B multimodal model with its family's best coding score — it beats a 397B mixture-of-experts, but costs more per token. They diverge most on context window and coding benchmarks — each quantified below from the models' real specs.
Key differences
Context window: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super holds 3.8× more — 1M (~1,500 pages) vs 256K (~393 pages). But effective recall usually fades long before the advertised ceiling, so the bigger number only helps if the model reasons over it.
Coding: Qwen3.6 27B leads SWE-Bench Verified by 16.7 points (60.47% vs 77.2%) — a real edge on hard, real-world software tasks.
Recency: Qwen3.6 27B is the newer model by about 42 days (released April 22, 2026), usually meaning fresher training data and capabilities.
Ecosystem: this is a US-vs-China matchup — they differ in pricing philosophy, data-residency options, and tooling ecosystems, not only benchmarks.
Specifications
Spec
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super
Qwen3.6 27B
Provider
NVIDIA (US)
Alibaba (China)
Released
March 11, 2026
April 22, 2026
Context window
1M (~1,500 pages)
256K (~393 pages)
Price (in/out)
Open weight (self-host / free)
Open weight (self-host / free)
Open weight?
Yes — self-hostable
Yes — self-hostable
Modalities
text, code
text, image, code
SWE-Bench Verified
60.47%
77.2%
MRCR v2 @ 1M
Not published
Not published
Who wins what
High-throughput agentic reasoning (up to 2.2x GPT-OSS-120B): NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super — NVIDIA's open 120B-total/12B-active hybrid Mamba-Transformer MoE built for high-throughput agentic reasoning at 1M-token context — and it carries the larger 1M context.
1M-token context with strong long-context retrieval (91.6% RULER @ 1M): NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super — Its 1M window holds about 3.8× more than Qwen3.6 27B's 256K in a single prompt.
Strong math reasoning (90.21% AIME 2025): NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super — NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super lists strong math reasoning (90.21% AIME 2025) among its strengths; Qwen3.6 27B does not.
The best open coding score in its family — 77.2% on SWE-Bench Verified, beating Alibaba's own 397B mixture-of-experts at a fifteenth of the size: Qwen3.6 27B — It scores 77.2% on SWE-Bench Verified against NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super's 60.47% — a 16.7-point edge on real repository work.
Dense, so quality per gigabyte of VRAM is high: it fits one consumer GPU when quantised: Qwen3.6 27B — A dense 27B multimodal model with its family's best coding score — it beats a 397B mixture-of-experts, but costs more per token — and it leads SWE-Bench Verified 77.2% to 60.47%.
Far stronger agentic work than its sparse sibling (59.3 against 51.5 on Terminal-Bench 2.0): Qwen3.6 27B — A dense 27B multimodal model with its family's best coding score — it beats a 397B mixture-of-experts, but costs more per token — and it is the newer of the two.
Largest single-prompt input: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super — Its 1M window is about 3.8× larger than Qwen3.6 27B's 256K, fitting roughly 1,500 pages in one prompt.
Which should you pick?
Someone analysing very long documents or codebases: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super — Larger 1M window fits more in one prompt.
Anyone whose priority is high-throughput agentic reasoning (up to 2.2x gpt-oss-120b): NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super — It is specifically built for that.
Anyone whose priority is the best open coding score in its family — 77.2% on swe-bench verified, beating alibaba's own 397b mixture-of-experts at a fifteenth of the size: Qwen3.6 27B — That is its strongest area.
An enterprise with regional data-residency rules: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super or Qwen3.6 27B — Origin (US vs China) affects where data is processed and which compliance regime applies — check the provider's terms for your region.
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super: where it fits
NVIDIA's open 120B-total/12B-active hybrid Mamba-Transformer MoE built for high-throughput agentic reasoning at 1M-token context. Released March 11, 2026 by NVIDIA, it is built for high-throughput agentic reasoning (up to 2.2x GPT-OSS-120B), 1M-token context with strong long-context retrieval (91.6% RULER @ 1M), strong math reasoning (90.21% AIME 2025), and fully open weights, datasets, and recipes for self-hosting.
Its trade-offs are real: text-only; no image, audio, or video input, and requires roughly 8x H100-80GB GPUs to self-host at BF16. As an open-weight model, its running cost is your own hardware rather than a per-token fee.
Qwen3.6 27B: where it fits
A dense 27B multimodal model with its family's best coding score — it beats a 397B mixture-of-experts, but costs more per token. Released April 22, 2026 by Alibaba, it is built for the best open coding score in its family — 77.2% on SWE-Bench Verified, beating Alibaba's own 397B mixture-of-experts at a fifteenth of the size, dense, so quality per gigabyte of VRAM is high: it fits one consumer GPU when quantised, far stronger agentic work than its sparse sibling (59.3 against 51.5 on Terminal-Bench 2.0), and dense models fine-tune far more predictably than mixture-of-experts models do.
Its trade-offs: every parameter fires on every token, so it is slower and costlier per token than the sparse 35B, hosted output pricing is the harshest in its family, and provider input prices moved by roughly half in a single quarter, and its SWE-Bench score comes from Alibaba's internal scaffold rather than the standard public harness. As an open-weight model, its running cost is your own hardware rather than a per-token fee.
The bottom line for this matchup
This is less "which is smarter" and more "which ecosystem fits." NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super (US) and Qwen3.6 27B (China) differ on pricing philosophy, data-residency, and tooling as much as on raw scores. The pragmatic move is to run one real task through both and judge the outputs against your own constraints — including where your data is allowed to be processed.
Frequently asked questions
Is NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super or Qwen3.6 27B better for coding?
On SWE-Bench Verified, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super scores 60.47% and Qwen3.6 27B scores 77.2% — Qwen3.6 27B has the measurable edge.
Which is cheaper, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super or Qwen3.6 27B?
They are priced almost identically, so cost will not decide between them.
Which has the bigger context window?
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super — 1M vs 256K, about 3.8× larger. Useful only if the model actually reasons over the full window, which not all do.
Can I use both NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super and Qwen3.6 27B together?
Yes — a multi-model platform like LumiChats gives you NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super, Qwen3.6 27B and 40+ others under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day), so you can draft with one and cross-check with the other instead of buying two subscriptions.
Which is newer, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super or Qwen3.6 27B?
Qwen3.6 27B — released April 22, 2026, about 42 days after NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super.
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super vs Qwen3.6 27B
NVIDIA · US | Alibaba · China · Updated June 2026
Quick verdict
Pick NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super for high-throughput agentic reasoning (up to 2.2x gpt-oss-120b) or 1m-token context with strong long-context retrieval (91.6% ruler @ 1m). Pick Qwen3.6 27B for the best open coding score in its family — 77.2% on swe-bench verified, beating alibaba's own 397b mixture-of-experts at a fifteenth of the size or dense, so quality per gigabyte of vram is high: it fits one consumer gpu when quantised.
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super (NVIDIA, US) and Qwen3.6 27B (Alibaba, China) line up two different AI ecosystems against each other — a comparison that is as much about cost philosophy and openness as raw capability. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super is nVIDIA's open 120B-total/12B-active hybrid Mamba-Transformer MoE built for high-throughput agentic reasoning at 1M-token context. Qwen3.6 27B is a dense 27B multimodal model with its family's best coding score — it beats a 397B mixture-of-experts, but costs more per token. They diverge most on context window and coding benchmarks — each quantified below from the models' real specs.
Key differences at a glance
▸Context window: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super holds 3.8× more — 1M (~1,500 pages) vs 256K (~393 pages). But effective recall usually fades long before the advertised ceiling, so the bigger number only helps if the model reasons over it.
▸Coding: Qwen3.6 27B leads SWE-Bench Verified by 16.7 points (60.47% vs 77.2%) — a real edge on hard, real-world software tasks.
▸Recency: Qwen3.6 27B is the newer model by about 42 days (released April 22, 2026), usually meaning fresher training data and capabilities.
▸Ecosystem: this is a US-vs-China matchup — they differ in pricing philosophy, data-residency options, and tooling ecosystems, not only benchmarks.
Side-by-side specs
Spec
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super
Qwen3.6 27B
Provider
NVIDIA (US)
Alibaba (China)
Released
March 11, 2026
April 22, 2026
Context window
1M (~1,500 pages)
256K (~393 pages)
Price (in/out)
Open weight (self-host / free)
Open weight (self-host / free)
Open weight?
Yes — self-hostable
Yes — self-hostable
Modalities
text, code
text, image, code
SWE-Bench Verified
60.47%
77.2%
MRCR v2 @ 1M
Not published
Not published
Who wins what
High-throughput agentic reasoning (up to 2.2x GPT-OSS-120B)
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super
NVIDIA's open 120B-total/12B-active hybrid Mamba-Transformer MoE built for high-throughput agentic reasoning at 1M-token context — and it carries the larger 1M context.
1M-token context with strong long-context retrieval (91.6% RULER @ 1M)
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super
Its 1M window holds about 3.8× more than Qwen3.6 27B's 256K in a single prompt.
Strong math reasoning (90.21% AIME 2025)
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super lists strong math reasoning (90.21% AIME 2025) among its strengths; Qwen3.6 27B does not.
The best open coding score in its family — 77.2% on SWE-Bench Verified, beating Alibaba's own 397B mixture-of-experts at a fifteenth of the size
Qwen3.6 27B
It scores 77.2% on SWE-Bench Verified against NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super's 60.47% — a 16.7-point edge on real repository work.
Dense, so quality per gigabyte of VRAM is high: it fits one consumer GPU when quantised
Qwen3.6 27B
A dense 27B multimodal model with its family's best coding score — it beats a 397B mixture-of-experts, but costs more per token — and it leads SWE-Bench Verified 77.2% to 60.47%.
Far stronger agentic work than its sparse sibling (59.3 against 51.5 on Terminal-Bench 2.0)
Qwen3.6 27B
A dense 27B multimodal model with its family's best coding score — it beats a 397B mixture-of-experts, but costs more per token — and it is the newer of the two.
Largest single-prompt input
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super
Its 1M window is about 3.8× larger than Qwen3.6 27B's 256K, fitting roughly 1,500 pages in one prompt.
Which should you pick?
Someone analysing very long documents or codebases
→ NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super
Larger 1M window fits more in one prompt.
Anyone whose priority is high-throughput agentic reasoning (up to 2.2x gpt-oss-120b)
→ NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super
It is specifically built for that.
Anyone whose priority is the best open coding score in its family — 77.2% on swe-bench verified, beating alibaba's own 397b mixture-of-experts at a fifteenth of the size
→ Qwen3.6 27B
That is its strongest area.
An enterprise with regional data-residency rules
→ NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super or Qwen3.6 27B
Origin (US vs China) affects where data is processed and which compliance regime applies — check the provider's terms for your region.
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super: where it fits
NVIDIA's open 120B-total/12B-active hybrid Mamba-Transformer MoE built for high-throughput agentic reasoning at 1M-token context. Released March 11, 2026 by NVIDIA, it is built for high-throughput agentic reasoning (up to 2.2x GPT-OSS-120B), 1M-token context with strong long-context retrieval (91.6% RULER @ 1M), strong math reasoning (90.21% AIME 2025), and fully open weights, datasets, and recipes for self-hosting.
Its trade-offs are real: text-only; no image, audio, or video input, and requires roughly 8x H100-80GB GPUs to self-host at BF16. As an open-weight model, its running cost is your own hardware rather than a per-token fee.
Qwen3.6 27B: where it fits
A dense 27B multimodal model with its family's best coding score — it beats a 397B mixture-of-experts, but costs more per token. Released April 22, 2026 by Alibaba, it is built for the best open coding score in its family — 77.2% on SWE-Bench Verified, beating Alibaba's own 397B mixture-of-experts at a fifteenth of the size, dense, so quality per gigabyte of VRAM is high: it fits one consumer GPU when quantised, far stronger agentic work than its sparse sibling (59.3 against 51.5 on Terminal-Bench 2.0), and dense models fine-tune far more predictably than mixture-of-experts models do.
Its trade-offs: every parameter fires on every token, so it is slower and costlier per token than the sparse 35B, hosted output pricing is the harshest in its family, and provider input prices moved by roughly half in a single quarter, and its SWE-Bench score comes from Alibaba's internal scaffold rather than the standard public harness. As an open-weight model, its running cost is your own hardware rather than a per-token fee.
The bottom line for this matchup
This is less "which is smarter" and more "which ecosystem fits." NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super (US) and Qwen3.6 27B (China) differ on pricing philosophy, data-residency, and tooling as much as on raw scores. The pragmatic move is to run one real task through both and judge the outputs against your own constraints — including where your data is allowed to be processed.
Want both NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super and Qwen3.6 27B without two subscriptions? LumiChats gives you these plus 40+ models under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day) — draft with one, cross-check with the other.
Is NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super or Qwen3.6 27B better for coding?
On SWE-Bench Verified, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super scores 60.47% and Qwen3.6 27B scores 77.2% — Qwen3.6 27B has the measurable edge.
Which is cheaper, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super or Qwen3.6 27B?
They are priced almost identically, so cost will not decide between them.
Which has the bigger context window?
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super — 1M vs 256K, about 3.8× larger. Useful only if the model actually reasons over the full window, which not all do.
Can I use both NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super and Qwen3.6 27B together?
Yes — a multi-model platform like LumiChats gives you NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super, Qwen3.6 27B and 40+ others under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day), so you can draft with one and cross-check with the other instead of buying two subscriptions.
Which is newer, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super or Qwen3.6 27B?
Qwen3.6 27B — released April 22, 2026, about 42 days after NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super.
Specifications and benchmarks reflect publicly reported figures as of June 2026 and may change as providers release updates. Always verify on your own workload.