Model comparison
Nova 2 Lite vs o3-mini
Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.7 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Nova 2 Lite scores higher in 6 categories and o3-mini in 3 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nova 2 Lite leads 27.5 to 16.3.
- Nova 2 Lite is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o3-mini.
- Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 200K.
Side by side
| Nova 2 Lite | o3-mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 39.7 | 36.7 |
| Released | 2025-12-01 | 2024-12-20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 200K |
| Max output | 64K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $1.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $2.50 | $4.40 |
| Results tracked | 19 | 51 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Nova 2 Lite: 40.7 (#134), o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1385 | 1378 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 60.4% |
| SciCode | — | 39.8% |
| GSO | — | 1.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 82.7% |
| CadEval | — | 54% |
Agentic & Tool Use o3-mini leads
Nova 2 Lite: 24.1 (#121), o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | — |
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |
Reasoning Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 27.5 (#118), o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | 1366 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 3% |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 34.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 89.6% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 7% |
| DTBench | — | 68.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 70.6% |
| LMCA | — | 19% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 140.34 |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.6 |
| LiveBench | — | 75.9% |
Math Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 37.5 (#156), o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1396 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 76.9% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 77.3% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |
Knowledge Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 43.0 (#94), o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1364 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 77% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
Multilingual Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 47.1 (#153), o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1337 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1364 | 1379 |
| LMArena French | 1381 | 1334 |
| LMArena German | 1343 | 1303 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1271 | 1286 |
| LMArena Korean | 1284 | 1314 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1304 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1373 | 1321 |
Instruction Following o3-mini leads
Nova 2 Lite: 70.5 (#161), o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1335 | 1337 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 84.4% |
Long Context Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#150), o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1335 | 1343 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |
Writing & Preference Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 53.9 (#154), o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1362 | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1291 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1338 | 1320 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |
| LiveBench Language | — | 50.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Nova 2 Lite better than o3-mini?
Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.7 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Nova 2 Lite or o3-mini?
Nova 2 Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; o3-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.
Is Nova 2 Lite or o3-mini better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (40.7 vs 40.8); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Nova 2 Lite does, with 1M tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Nova 2 Lite and o3-mini share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nova 2 Lite has 19 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.