Model comparison
Amazon Nova Lite vs o4-mini
o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index. Amazon Nova Lite costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 26 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Lite scores higher in 0 categories and o4-mini in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where o4-mini leads 43.6 to 26.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Omni-MATH: 23.3% for Amazon Nova Lite and 72% for o4-mini.
- Amazon Nova Lite is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.24 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o4-mini.
- Amazon Nova Lite accepts more context: 300K tokens versus 200K.
Side by side
| Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 41.6 |
| Released | 2024-12-03 | 2025-04-16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 300K | 200K |
| Max output | 10K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.06 | $1.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.24 | $4.40 |
| Results tracked | 34 | 60 |
Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry
Category by category
Coding o4-mini leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 32.5 (#270), o4-mini: 40.9 (#127)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1239 | 1368 |
| ALE-Bench | 236.25 | 826.17 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 45% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 72% |
| GSO | — | 3.6% |
| WeirdML | — | 52.6% |
| LiveBench Coding | 27.5% | — |
| CadEval | — | 62% |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.72 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Amazon Nova Lite: —, o4-mini: 32.6 (#61)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 53.2% |
| GDPval | — | 25.3% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 63.9% |
Reasoning o4-mini leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 19.3 (#260), o4-mini: 24.6 (#162)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1351 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 6.1% |
| SimpleBench | — | 38.7% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 67.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 58.7% |
| CritPt | — | 0.6% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 26% |
| EnigmaEval | — | 9.2% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 36.7% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 5% |
| DTBench | — | 77.6% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 37.2% | — |
| LMCA | — | 26.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 145.64 |
| ForecastBench | — | 61.8 |
| LiveBench | 36.4% | — |
Math o4-mini leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 27.8 (#247), o4-mini: 40.8 (#89)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Omni-MATH | 23.3% | 72% |
| LMArena Math | 1227 | 1389 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 36.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 4.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 81.7% |
| LiveBench Math | 36.7% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.8% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 24.8% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 6.3% |
Knowledge o4-mini leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 26.3 (#259), o4-mini: 43.6 (#91)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Humanity's Last Exam | 3.6% | 18.1% |
| MMLU-Pro | 60% | 82% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | 18.6% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.7% | 73.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1201 | 1343 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 79.6% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 19.6% |
| Confabulations | — | 15.8% |
| MMLU | 77% | — |
Multimodal o4-mini leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 25.5 (#123), o4-mini: 40.2 (#49)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 990 | 1194 |
| GeoBench | — | 64% |
| VPCT | — | 57.5% |
Multilingual o4-mini leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 38.0 (#232), o4-mini: 47.0 (#154)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1208 | 1337 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | 1354 |
| LMArena French | 1237 | 1364 |
| LMArena German | 1229 | 1336 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1153 | 1308 |
| LMArena Korean | 1153 | 1312 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1334 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1226 | 1347 |
Instruction Following o4-mini leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 59.3 (#255), o4-mini: 75.2 (#68)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 77.6% | 92.8% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1205 | 1321 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 54.1% | — |
Long Context o4-mini leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 37.4 (#217), o4-mini: 45.5 (#33)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1234 | 1315 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 77.8% |
Writing & Preference o4-mini leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 42.1 (#237), o4-mini: 54.0 (#152)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1229 | 1353 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1197 | 1294 |
| WildBench | 75% | 85.4% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1199 | 1350 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75% |
| LiveBench Language | 25.9% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Amazon Nova Lite better than o4-mini?
o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index. Amazon Nova Lite costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Lite or o4-mini?
Amazon Nova Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.24 per million output tokens; o4-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.
Is Amazon Nova Lite or o4-mini better for coding?
o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.9 versus 32.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Amazon Nova Lite does, with 300K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Amazon Nova Lite and o4-mini share?
26 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Lite has 34 scored results on Noometry and o4-mini has 60.