Noometry

Model comparison

Mistral Small vs Nova 2 Lite

Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.7 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 3.2× 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.

Mistral Small Mistral AI

33.4

Rank #243 Confirmed

Nova 2 Lite Amazon

39.7

Rank #161 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 1 category and Nova 2 Lite in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Nova 2 Lite leads 37.5 to 16.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 37.1% for Mistral Small and 27.1% for Nova 2 Lite.
  • Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Nova 2 Lite.
  • Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Mistral SmallNova 2 Lite
ProviderMistral AIAmazon
Noometry Index33.439.7
Released2024-02-262025-12-01
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window262K1M
Max output256K64K
Input $ / M tokens$0.15$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$0.60$2.50
Results tracked3919

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Category by category

Coding Nova 2 Lite leads

Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247), Nova 2 Lite: 40.7 (#134)

BenchmarkMistral SmallNova 2 Lite
LMArena Coding13621385
SciCode26.5%—
BigCodeBench Instruct36.1%—
LiveBench Coding36.2%—
BigCodeBench Complete46.6%—
ALE-Bench497.62—

Agentic & Tool Use Mistral Small leads

Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93), Nova 2 Lite: 24.1 (#121)

BenchmarkMistral SmallNova 2 Lite
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard37.1%27.1%

Reasoning Nova 2 Lite leads

Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250), Nova 2 Lite: 27.5 (#118)

BenchmarkMistral SmallNova 2 Lite
LMArena Hard Prompts13351364
Kagi LLM Benchmark37.8%—
CritPt0%—
LiveBench Reasoning44.8%—
DTBench70.9%—
LiveBench Data Analysis53.7%—
LMCA20.6%—
LiveBench44%—

Math Nova 2 Lite leads

Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293), Nova 2 Lite: 37.5 (#156)

BenchmarkMistral SmallNova 2 Lite
LMArena Math13411359
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-20255.8%—
LiveBench Math39.9%—
MATH Level 546.8%—

Knowledge Nova 2 Lite leads

Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222), Nova 2 Lite: 43.0 (#94)

BenchmarkMistral SmallNova 2 Lite
Vectara Hallucination Rate5.1%5.1%
LMArena Expert12911358
GPQA Diamond47.5%—
MMLU68.7%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96), Nova 2 Lite: —

BenchmarkMistral SmallNova 2 Lite
LMArena Vision1142—

Multilingual Nova 2 Lite leads

Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169), Nova 2 Lite: 47.1 (#153)

BenchmarkMistral SmallNova 2 Lite
LMArena Non-English13151337
LMArena Chinese13401364
LMArena French13371381
LMArena German13401343
LMArena Japanese12751271
LMArena Korean12591284
LMArena Russian13241343
LMArena Spanish13461373

Instruction Following Nova 2 Lite leads

Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209), Nova 2 Lite: 70.5 (#161)

BenchmarkMistral SmallNova 2 Lite
LMArena Instruction Following13101335
LiveBench Instruction Following63.7%—

Long Context Too close to call

Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156), Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#150)

BenchmarkMistral SmallNova 2 Lite
LMArena Longer Query13271335

Writing & Preference Nova 2 Lite leads

Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171), Nova 2 Lite: 53.9 (#154)

BenchmarkMistral SmallNova 2 Lite
LMArena Text13381362
LMArena Creative Writing13051291
LMArena Multi-Turn13441338
LiveBench Language30.5%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Mistral Small better than Nova 2 Lite?

Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.7 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 3.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Nova 2 Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Mistral Small or Nova 2 Lite?

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Nova 2 Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.

Is Mistral Small or Nova 2 Lite better for coding?

Nova 2 Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.7 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Nova 2 Lite does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Mistral Small and Nova 2 Lite share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Nova 2 Lite has 19.

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