# Amazon Nova Lite vs Granite 4.2 8B

> Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 31.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/amazon-nova-lite-vs-granite-4-2-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Lite scores higher in 0 categories and Granite 4.2 8B in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 37.7 to 26.0.
- Both cost about the same: $0.06 input and $0.24 output per million tokens.
- Amazon Nova Lite accepts more context: 300K tokens versus 131K.
- Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Amazon Nova Lite | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 31.4 | 40.0 |
| Rank | 262 | 143 |
| Context | 300K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $0.06 |
| Output $/M | $0.24 | $0.25 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Amazon Nova Lite: 32.0 (#266)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 39.9 (#138)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1239 | 1379 |
| LiveBench Coding | 27.5% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 236.25 | — |

## Reasoning

- Amazon Nova Lite: 18.5 (#257)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 25.5 (#130)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1327 |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 36.7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 37.2% | — |
| LiveBench | 36.4% | — |

## Math

- Amazon Nova Lite: 25.8 (#243)
- Granite 4.2 8B: —

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Omni-MATH | 23.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 36.7% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1227 | — |

## Knowledge

- Amazon Nova Lite: 26.0 (#254)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 37.7 (#144)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1201 | 1380 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 3.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 60% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.7% | — |
| MMLU | 77% | — |

## Multimodal

- Amazon Nova Lite: 25.0 (#118)
- Granite 4.2 8B: —

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 990 | — |

## Multilingual

- Amazon Nova Lite: 38.2 (#227)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#173)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1208 | 1299 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | 1361 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1283 |
| LMArena French | 1237 | — |
| LMArena German | 1229 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1153 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1153 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1225 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Amazon Nova Lite: 59.6 (#250)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#183)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1205 | 1298 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 54.1% | — |
| IFEval | 77.6% | — |

## Long Context

- Amazon Nova Lite: 37.4 (#212)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.2 (#154)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1234 | 1323 |

## Writing & Preference

- Amazon Nova Lite: 42.3 (#232)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.8 (#183)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1229 | 1319 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1197 | 1238 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1199 | 1299 |
| WildBench | 75% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 25.9% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Amazon Nova Lite better than Granite 4.2 8B?

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 31.4 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Lite or Granite 4.2 8B?

Amazon Nova Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.24 per million output tokens; Granite 4.2 8B lists at $0.06 and $0.25.

### Is Amazon Nova Lite or Granite 4.2 8B better for coding?

Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.9 versus 32.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Amazon Nova Lite does, with 300K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Amazon Nova Lite and Granite 4.2 8B share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Lite has 34 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 8B has 11.