Model comparison
Nova 2 Lite vs Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 39.0 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Nova 2 Lite scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in multilingual, where Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads 52.3 to 47.3.
- Both cost about the same: $0.30 input and $2.50 output per million tokens.
- Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.0 | 42.5 |
| Released | 2025-12-01 | 2025-09 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 131K |
| Max output | 64K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $2.50 | $2 |
| Results tracked | 19 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Nova 2 Lite: 40.1 (#131), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.9 (#101)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1386 | 1441 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Nova 2 Lite: 23.9 (#114), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Nova 2 Lite: 26.4 (#120), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 30.1 (#79)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | 1428 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 66.7% |
Math Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Nova 2 Lite: 34.8 (#154), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 36.3 (#118)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1440 |
| Omni-MATH | — | 46.7% |
Knowledge Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 42.5 (#88), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.3 (#102)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | 9.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1360 | 1416 |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.6% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 63% |
Multilingual Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Nova 2 Lite: 47.3 (#148), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.3 (#88)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1337 | 1407 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1364 | 1461 |
| LMArena French | 1381 | 1415 |
| LMArena German | 1343 | 1416 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1273 | 1398 |
| LMArena Korean | 1284 | 1366 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1403 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1372 | 1436 |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Nova 2 Lite: 70.7 (#156), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 71.0 (#154)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1335 | 1388 |
| IFEval | — | 81% |
Long Context Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#145), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#218)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1335 | 1403 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 55.6% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Nova 2 Lite: 54.1 (#150), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.2 (#116)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1362 | 1417 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1291 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1338 | 1415 |
| WildBench | — | 80.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Nova 2 Lite better than Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 39.0 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Nova 2 Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct lists at $0.50 and $2.
Is Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct better for coding?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.9 versus 40.1 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct share?
18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nova 2 Lite has 19 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25.