Model comparison

Nova 2 Lite vs Qwen3.5-9B

Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 7.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Nova 2 Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 0 shared benchmarks.

Nova 2 Lite Amazon

39.0

Rank #161 Confirmed

Qwen3.5-9B

Alibaba (Qwen)

33.3

Rank #235 Confirmed

Summary

The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where Nova 2 Lite leads 23.9 to 14.4.
Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Nova 2 Lite.
Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Nova 2 Lite and Qwen3.5-9B specifications
	Nova 2 Lite	Qwen3.5-9B
Provider	Amazon	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	39.0	33.3
Released	2025-12-01	2026-02-23
Weights	Proprietary	Open
Context window	1M	262K
Max output	64K	66K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.30	$0.10
Output $ / M tokens	$2.50	$0.15
Results tracked	19	10

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Category by category

Coding Nova 2 Lite leads

Nova 2 Lite: 40.1 (#131), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.3 (#213)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Nova 2 Lite	Qwen3.5-9B
SciCode	—	27.5%
LMArena Coding	1386	—

Agentic & Tool Use Nova 2 Lite leads

Nova 2 Lite: 23.9 (#114), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.4 (#143)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Nova 2 Lite	Qwen3.5-9B
Terminal-Bench	—	9.2%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	27.1%	—

Reasoning Nova 2 Lite leads

Nova 2 Lite: 26.4 (#120), Qwen3.5-9B: 22.5 (#178)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Nova 2 Lite	Qwen3.5-9B
CritPt	—	0.3%
Chess Puzzles	—	12%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1364	—
DTBench	—	71.2%
LMCA	—	24.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	139.45

Math Nova 2 Lite leads

Nova 2 Lite: 34.8 (#154), Qwen3.5-9B: 33.5 (#174)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Nova 2 Lite	Qwen3.5-9B
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions	—	48.5%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	61.7%
LMArena Math	1359	—

Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads

Nova 2 Lite: 42.5 (#88), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#77)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Nova 2 Lite	Qwen3.5-9B
GPQA Diamond	—	79%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	5.1%	—
LMArena Expert	1360	—

Multilingual Not comparable

Nova 2 Lite: 47.3 (#148), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Nova 2 Lite	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Non-English	1337	—
LMArena Chinese	1364	—
LMArena French	1381	—
LMArena German	1343	—
LMArena Japanese	1273	—
LMArena Korean	1284	—
LMArena Russian	1343	—
LMArena Spanish	1372	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Nova 2 Lite: 70.7 (#156), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Nova 2 Lite	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Instruction Following	1335	—

Long Context Not comparable

Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#145), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Nova 2 Lite	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Longer Query	1335	—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Nova 2 Lite: 54.1 (#150), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Nova 2 Lite	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Text	1362	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1291	—
LMArena Multi-Turn	1338	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Nova 2 Lite better than Qwen3.5-9B?

Which is cheaper, Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3.5-9B?

Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Nova 2 Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.

Is Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

Nova 2 Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 35.3 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

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

How many benchmarks do Nova 2 Lite and Qwen3.5-9B share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nova 2 Lite has 19 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.