# Amazon Nova Lite vs Llama 3.1-8B

> Amazon Nova Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 23.0 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.1-8B costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Amazon Nova Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/amazon-nova-lite-vs-llama-3-1-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 23

## Summary

- They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Lite scores higher in 8 categories and Llama 3.1-8B in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Amazon Nova Lite leads 26.3 to 8.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MMLU-Pro: 60% for Amazon Nova Lite and 40.6% for Llama 3.1-8B.
- Llama 3.1-8B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.06 / $0.24 for Amazon Nova Lite.
- Amazon Nova Lite accepts more context: 300K tokens versus 128K.
- Llama 3.1-8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 23.0 |
| Rank | 265 | 352 |
| Context | 300K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $0.24 | $0.08 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Amazon Nova Lite: 32.5 (#270)
- Llama 3.1-8B: 20.2 (#340)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1239 | 1195 |
| SciCode | — | 13.2% |
| WeirdML | — | 1.7% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 32.8% |
| LiveBench Coding | 27.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 40.5% |
| ALE-Bench | 236.25 | — |
| HumanEval+ | — | 62.8% |
| MBPP+ | — | 55.6% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Amazon Nova Lite: —
- Llama 3.1-8B: 22.5 (#131)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 25.8% |
| BALROG | — | 15.1% |

## Reasoning

- Amazon Nova Lite: 19.3 (#260)
- Llama 3.1-8B: 14.9 (#321)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1175 |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 36.7% | — |
| DTBench | — | 50.9% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 37.2% | — |
| LMCA | — | 5.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 116.57 |
| LiveBench | 36.4% | — |
| PIQA | — | 81.2% |

## Math

- Amazon Nova Lite: 27.8 (#247)
- Llama 3.1-8B: 10.2 (#317)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Omni-MATH | 23.3% | 13.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1227 | 1179 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 1.7% |
| LiveBench Math | 36.7% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 22.9% |
| GSM8K | — | 82.4% |

## Knowledge

- Amazon Nova Lite: 26.3 (#259)
- Llama 3.1-8B: 8.0 (#307)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 60% | 40.6% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.7% | 24.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1201 | 1144 |
| MMLU | 77% | 56.1% |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 27% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 3.6% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | — |
| BoolQ | — | 82.8% |

## Multimodal

- Amazon Nova Lite: 25.5 (#123)
- Llama 3.1-8B: —

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 990 | — |

## Multilingual

- Amazon Nova Lite: 38.0 (#232)
- Llama 3.1-8B: 34.0 (#249)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1208 | 1148 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | 1151 |
| LMArena French | 1237 | 1177 |
| LMArena German | 1229 | 1144 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1153 | 1061 |
| LMArena Korean | 1153 | 1053 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1158 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1226 | 1169 |

## Instruction Following

- Amazon Nova Lite: 59.3 (#255)
- Llama 3.1-8B: 58.9 (#258)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 77.6% | 74.3% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1205 | 1159 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 54.1% | — |

## Long Context

- Amazon Nova Lite: 37.4 (#217)
- Llama 3.1-8B: 35.8 (#238)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1234 | 1182 |

## Writing & Preference

- Amazon Nova Lite: 42.1 (#237)
- Llama 3.1-8B: 29.7 (#290)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1229 | 1187 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1197 | 1154 |
| WildBench | 75% | 68.7% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1199 | 1172 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 713 |
| LiveBench Language | 25.9% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Amazon Nova Lite better than Llama 3.1-8B?

Amazon Nova Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 23.0 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.1-8B costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Amazon Nova Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Lite or Llama 3.1-8B?

Llama 3.1-8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Amazon Nova Lite lists at $0.06 and $0.24.

### Is Amazon Nova Lite or Llama 3.1-8B better for coding?

Amazon Nova Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 32.5 versus 20.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Amazon Nova Lite does, with 300K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Amazon Nova Lite and Llama 3.1-8B share?

23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Lite has 34 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3.1-8B has 43.