Model comparison
Llama 4 Maverick vs Nova 2 Lite
Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.7 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Llama 4 Maverick costs 2.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Nova 2 Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 19 shared benchmarks.
MetaSummary
- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 4 Maverick scores higher in 2 categories and Nova 2 Lite in 7 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nova 2 Lite leads 27.5 to 10.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 37.3% for Llama 4 Maverick and 27.1% for Nova 2 Lite.
- Llama 4 Maverick is cheaper at $0.19 / $0.65 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Nova 2 Lite.
- Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Llama 4 Maverick has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | Amazon |
| Noometry Index | 30.9 | 39.7 |
| Released | 2025-04-05 | 2025-12-01 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 1M |
| Max output | 4K | 64K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.19 | $0.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.65 | $2.50 |
| Results tracked | 54 | 19 |
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Category by category
Coding Nova 2 Lite leads
Llama 4 Maverick: 26.6 (#324), Nova 2 Lite: 40.7 (#134)
| Benchmark | Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1302 | 1385 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 21% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 15.6% | — |
| SciCode | 33.1% | — |
| WeirdML | 24.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 49.7% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 61.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 172.97 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Llama 4 Maverick leads
Llama 4 Maverick: 28.2 (#91), Nova 2 Lite: 24.1 (#121)
| Benchmark | Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.3% | 27.1% |
Reasoning Nova 2 Lite leads
Llama 4 Maverick: 10.1 (#342), Nova 2 Lite: 27.5 (#118)
| Benchmark | Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1281 | 1364 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| SimpleBench | 27.7% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 55.9% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 8% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 4.4% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 0.6% | — |
| DTBench | 61.9% | — |
| LMCA | 15.9% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 132.2 | — |
| ForecastBench | 57.5 | — |
Math Nova 2 Lite leads
Llama 4 Maverick: 26.0 (#262), Nova 2 Lite: 37.5 (#156)
| Benchmark | Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1299 | 1359 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 20.6% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 42.2% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 73% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 0.7% | — |
Knowledge Nova 2 Lite leads
Llama 4 Maverick: 33.4 (#204), Nova 2 Lite: 43.0 (#94)
| Benchmark | Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 8.2% | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1259 | 1358 |
| GPQA Diamond | 67% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 5.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 81% | — |
| Confabulations | 22.6% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 65% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Llama 4 Maverick: 31.6 (#105), Nova 2 Lite: —
| Benchmark | Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1142 | — |
| GeoBench | 52% | — |
| SpatialViz-Bench | 31.8% | — |
Multilingual Nova 2 Lite leads
Llama 4 Maverick: 42.2 (#195), Nova 2 Lite: 47.1 (#153)
| Benchmark | Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1269 | 1337 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1277 | 1364 |
| LMArena French | 1259 | 1381 |
| LMArena German | 1291 | 1343 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1207 | 1271 |
| LMArena Korean | 1203 | 1284 |
| LMArena Russian | 1286 | 1343 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1293 | 1373 |
Instruction Following Llama 4 Maverick leads
Llama 4 Maverick: 71.7 (#146), Nova 2 Lite: 70.5 (#161)
| Benchmark | Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1267 | 1335 |
| IFEval | 90.8% | — |
Long Context Nova 2 Lite leads
Llama 4 Maverick: 31.4 (#279), Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#150)
| Benchmark | Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1280 | 1335 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 46.2% | — |
Writing & Preference Nova 2 Lite leads
Llama 4 Maverick: 38.8 (#252), Nova 2 Lite: 53.9 (#154)
| Benchmark | Llama 4 Maverick | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1287 | 1362 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1267 | 1291 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1289 | 1338 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 62% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 860 | — |
| WildBench | 80% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Llama 4 Maverick better than Nova 2 Lite?
Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.7 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Llama 4 Maverick costs 2.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Nova 2 Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Llama 4 Maverick or Nova 2 Lite?
Llama 4 Maverick is cheaper. It lists at $0.19 per million input tokens and $0.65 per million output tokens; Nova 2 Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.
Is Llama 4 Maverick or Nova 2 Lite better for coding?
Nova 2 Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.7 versus 26.6 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Nova 2 Lite does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Llama 4 Maverick and Nova 2 Lite share?
19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 4 Maverick has 54 scored results on Noometry and Nova 2 Lite has 19.