Model comparison
Amazon Nova Lite vs Llama 3.1-8B
Amazon Nova Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 23.0 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.1-8B costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Amazon Nova Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 23 shared benchmarks.
MetaSummary
- They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Lite scores higher in 8 categories and Llama 3.1-8B in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Amazon Nova Lite leads 26.3 to 8.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MMLU-Pro: 60% for Amazon Nova Lite and 40.6% for Llama 3.1-8B.
- Llama 3.1-8B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.06 / $0.24 for Amazon Nova Lite.
- Amazon Nova Lite accepts more context: 300K tokens versus 128K.
- Llama 3.1-8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 23.0 |
| Released | 2024-12-03 | 2024-07-23 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 300K | 128K |
| Max output | 10K | 4K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.06 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.24 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 34 | 43 |
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Category by category
Coding Amazon Nova Lite leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 32.5 (#270), Llama 3.1-8B: 20.2 (#340)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1239 | 1195 |
| SciCode | — | 13.2% |
| WeirdML | — | 1.7% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 32.8% |
| LiveBench Coding | 27.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 40.5% |
| ALE-Bench | 236.25 | — |
| HumanEval+ | — | 62.8% |
| MBPP+ | — | 55.6% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Amazon Nova Lite: —, Llama 3.1-8B: 22.5 (#131)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 25.8% |
| BALROG | — | 15.1% |
Reasoning Amazon Nova Lite leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 19.3 (#260), Llama 3.1-8B: 14.9 (#321)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1175 |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 36.7% | — |
| DTBench | — | 50.9% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 37.2% | — |
| LMCA | — | 5.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 116.57 |
| LiveBench | 36.4% | — |
| PIQA | — | 81.2% |
Math Amazon Nova Lite leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 27.8 (#247), Llama 3.1-8B: 10.2 (#317)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Omni-MATH | 23.3% | 13.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1227 | 1179 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 1.7% |
| LiveBench Math | 36.7% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 22.9% |
| GSM8K | — | 82.4% |
Knowledge Amazon Nova Lite leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 26.3 (#259), Llama 3.1-8B: 8.0 (#307)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 60% | 40.6% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.7% | 24.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1201 | 1144 |
| MMLU | 77% | 56.1% |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 27% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 3.6% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | — |
| BoolQ | — | 82.8% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Amazon Nova Lite: 25.5 (#123), Llama 3.1-8B: —
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 990 | — |
Multilingual Amazon Nova Lite leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 38.0 (#232), Llama 3.1-8B: 34.0 (#249)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1208 | 1148 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | 1151 |
| LMArena French | 1237 | 1177 |
| LMArena German | 1229 | 1144 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1153 | 1061 |
| LMArena Korean | 1153 | 1053 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1158 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1226 | 1169 |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Amazon Nova Lite: 59.3 (#255), Llama 3.1-8B: 58.9 (#258)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 77.6% | 74.3% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1205 | 1159 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 54.1% | — |
Long Context Amazon Nova Lite leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 37.4 (#217), Llama 3.1-8B: 35.8 (#238)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1234 | 1182 |
Writing & Preference Amazon Nova Lite leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 42.1 (#237), Llama 3.1-8B: 29.7 (#290)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1229 | 1187 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1197 | 1154 |
| WildBench | 75% | 68.7% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1199 | 1172 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 713 |
| LiveBench Language | 25.9% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Amazon Nova Lite better than Llama 3.1-8B?
Amazon Nova Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 23.0 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.1-8B costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Amazon Nova Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Lite or Llama 3.1-8B?
Llama 3.1-8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Amazon Nova Lite lists at $0.06 and $0.24.
Is Amazon Nova Lite or Llama 3.1-8B better for coding?
Amazon Nova Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 32.5 versus 20.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Amazon Nova Lite does, with 300K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Amazon Nova Lite and Llama 3.1-8B share?
23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Lite has 34 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3.1-8B has 43.