Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Nova 2 Lite
Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 39.7 on the Noometry Index. Nova 2 Lite costs 12× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in 9 categories and Nova 2 Lite in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 78.4 to 37.5.
- Nova 2 Lite is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.50 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.8.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Amazon |
| Noometry Index | 60.7 | 39.7 |
| Released | 2026-05-28 | 2025-12-01 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Max output | 128K | 64K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $25 | $2.50 |
| Results tracked | 65 | 19 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 59.9 (#12), Nova 2 Lite: 40.7 (#134)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1490 | 1385 |
| DeepSWE | 59% | — |
| FrontierCode | 46.5% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1556 | — |
| SciCode | 53.5% | — |
| GSO | 47.1% | — |
| WeirdML | 82.9% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,564 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#11), Nova 2 Lite: 24.1 (#121)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 48.9% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 27.1% |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 20.6% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 8.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 39.7% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 50.2% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 33.8% | — |
| GBAEval | 70.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 24% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1204 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 5,787 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 64.7 (#16), Nova 2 Lite: 27.5 (#118)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1482 | 1364 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 72.1% | — |
| SimpleBench | 64.8% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 88.8% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 91.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.5% | — |
| CritPt | 20.9% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 34% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 23.5% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 28.6% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 36% | — |
| DTBench | 94.9% | — |
| LMCA | 57.5% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 87.5% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 158.21 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.9 | — |
Math Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 78.4 (#13), Nova 2 Lite: 37.5 (#156)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1487 | 1359 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 80% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 56.1% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 91.8% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 98.3% | — |
| ProofBench | 69% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 47.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 31.3% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#29), Nova 2 Lite: 43.0 (#94)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1502 | 1358 |
| GPQA Diamond | 91% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 53% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.8: 42.9 (#26), Nova 2 Lite: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1294 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 14.5% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 42.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1475 | — |
Multilingual Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 55.2 (#33), Nova 2 Lite: 47.1 (#153)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1450 | 1337 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1507 | 1364 |
| LMArena French | 1481 | 1381 |
| LMArena German | 1472 | 1343 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1440 | 1271 |
| LMArena Korean | 1432 | 1284 |
| LMArena Russian | 1474 | 1343 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1466 | 1373 |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 77.4 (#24), Nova 2 Lite: 70.5 (#161)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | 1335 |
Long Context Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#35), Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#150)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1483 | 1335 |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 72.0 (#16), Nova 2 Lite: 53.9 (#154)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1461 | 1362 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1454 | 1291 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1476 | 1338 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1840 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1281 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Nova 2 Lite?
Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 39.7 on the Noometry Index. Nova 2 Lite costs 12× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Nova 2 Lite?
Nova 2 Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.
Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Nova 2 Lite better for coding?
Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 59.9 versus 40.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 1M tokens.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.8 and Nova 2 Lite share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and Nova 2 Lite has 19.