Model comparison

Nova 2 Lite vs Qwen3 235B-A22B

Qwen3 235B-A22B is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 39.7 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 19 shared benchmarks.

Nova 2 Lite Amazon

39.7

Rank #161 Confirmed

Qwen3 235B-A22B Alibaba (Qwen)

43.5

Rank #91 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Nova 2 Lite scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3 235B-A22B in 8 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 235B-A22B leads 50.4 to 37.5.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 27.1% for Nova 2 Lite and 52.1% for Qwen3 235B-A22B.
  • Nova 2 Lite is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.70 / $2.80 for Qwen3 235B-A22B.
  • Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3 235B-A22B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Nova 2 Lite and Qwen3 235B-A22B specifications
Nova 2 LiteQwen3 235B-A22B
ProviderAmazonAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index39.743.5
Released2025-12-012025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output64K16K
Input $ / M tokens$0.30$0.70
Output $ / M tokens$2.50$2.80
Results tracked1949

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Nova 2 Lite: 40.7 (#134), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 44.3 (#75)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkNova 2 LiteQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Coding13851445
Aider Polyglot—59.6%
SciCode—42.4%
WeirdML—41%

Agentic & Tool Use Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Nova 2 Lite: 24.1 (#121), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 33.9 (#51)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkNova 2 LiteQwen3 235B-A22B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard27.1%52.1%
Vending-Bench 2—-11.34

Reasoning Nova 2 Lite leads

Nova 2 Lite: 27.5 (#118), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 15.7 (#311)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkNova 2 LiteQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Hard Prompts13641433
ARC-AGI-2—1.3%
SimpleBench—31%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—69.4%
ARC-AGI-1—11%
CritPt—0%
Chess Puzzles—12%
Mystery Game Puzzles—9%
DTBench—80.3%
LMCA—29.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index—143.85
ForecastBench—59.7

Math Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Nova 2 Lite: 37.5 (#156), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 50.4 (#57)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkNova 2 LiteQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Math13591432
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—86.7%
Omni-MATH—71.8%
MATH Level 5—68.9%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—8.5%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—0%

Knowledge Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Nova 2 Lite: 43.0 (#94), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 49.6 (#73)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkNova 2 LiteQwen3 235B-A22B
Vectara Hallucination Rate5.1%9.3%
LMArena Expert13581463
GPQA Diamond—80.1%
SimpleQA Verified—40.4%
MMLU-Pro—84.4%
Confabulations—15.6%
GPQA (HELM)—72.7%

Multilingual Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Nova 2 Lite: 47.1 (#153), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 52.3 (#89)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkNova 2 LiteQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Non-English13371409
LMArena Chinese13641481
LMArena French13811445
LMArena German13431433
LMArena Japanese12711399
LMArena Korean12841391
LMArena Russian13431411
LMArena Spanish13731430

Instruction Following Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Nova 2 Lite: 70.5 (#161), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 72.6 (#136)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkNova 2 LiteQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Instruction Following13351408
IFEval—83.5%

Long Context Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#150), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 46.1 (#26)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkNova 2 LiteQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Longer Query13351426
Fiction.LiveBench—75%

Writing & Preference Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Nova 2 Lite: 53.9 (#154), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 59.6 (#108)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkNova 2 LiteQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Text13621419
LMArena Creative Writing12911384
LMArena Multi-Turn13381432
Short-Story Creative Writing—83%
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—1366
WildBench—86.6%

Frequently asked questions

Is Nova 2 Lite better than Qwen3 235B-A22B?

Qwen3 235B-A22B is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 39.7 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3 235B-A22B?

Nova 2 Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Qwen3 235B-A22B lists at $0.70 and $2.80.

Is Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3 235B-A22B better for coding?

Qwen3 235B-A22B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.3 versus 40.7 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Nova 2 Lite does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Nova 2 Lite and Qwen3 235B-A22B share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nova 2 Lite has 19 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 235B-A22B has 49.

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