Model comparison
Amazon Nova Lite vs Mercury 2
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index. Amazon Nova Lite costs 3.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mercury 2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Lite scores higher in 0 categories and Mercury 2 in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury 2 leads 53.8 to 42.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Vectara Hallucination Rate: 6.1% for Amazon Nova Lite and 12.3% for Mercury 2.
- Amazon Nova Lite is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.24 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mercury 2.
- Amazon Nova Lite accepts more context: 300K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Amazon Nova Lite | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 39.1 |
| Released | 2024-12-03 | 2026-02-20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 300K | 128K |
| Max output | 10K | 50K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.06 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.24 | $0.75 |
| Results tracked | 34 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Mercury 2 leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 32.5 (#270), Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1239 | 1391 |
| ALE-Bench | 236.25 | 785.58 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1171 |
| SciCode | — | 38.7% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.2% |
| LiveBench Coding | 27.5% | — |
Reasoning Mercury 2 leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 19.3 (#260), Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1362 |
| CritPt | — | 0.8% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 36.7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 37.2% | — |
| LiveBench | 36.4% | — |
Math Not comparable
Amazon Nova Lite: 27.8 (#247), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Omni-MATH | 23.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 36.7% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1227 | — |
Knowledge Mercury 2 leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 26.3 (#259), Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | 12.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1201 | 1358 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 3.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 60% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.7% | — |
| MMLU | 77% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Amazon Nova Lite: 25.5 (#123), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 990 | — |
Multilingual Mercury 2 leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 38.0 (#232), Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1208 | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | 1417 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1304 |
| LMArena French | 1237 | — |
| LMArena German | 1229 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1153 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1153 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1226 | — |
Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 59.3 (#255), Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1205 | 1329 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 54.1% | — |
| IFEval | 77.6% | — |
Long Context Mercury 2 leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 37.4 (#217), Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1234 | 1330 |
Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 42.1 (#237), Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1229 | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1197 | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1199 | 1358 |
| WildBench | 75% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 25.9% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Amazon Nova Lite better than Mercury 2?
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index. Amazon Nova Lite costs 3.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mercury 2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Lite or Mercury 2?
Amazon Nova Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.24 per million output tokens; Mercury 2 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.
Is Amazon Nova Lite or Mercury 2 better for coding?
Mercury 2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 32.5 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 Mercury 2 share?
13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Lite has 34 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.