# Amazon Nova Lite vs MiniMax-M2.5

> MiniMax-M2.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.3 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index. Amazon Nova Lite costs 5.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax-M2.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/amazon-nova-lite-vs-minimax-m2-5
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 19

## Summary

- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Lite scores higher in 2 categories and MiniMax-M2.5 in 6 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where MiniMax-M2.5 leads 48.1 to 32.5.
- Amazon Nova Lite is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.24 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $1.20 for MiniMax-M2.5.
- Amazon Nova Lite accepts more context: 300K tokens versus 205K.
- MiniMax-M2.5 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 38.3 |
| Rank | 265 | 188 |
| Context | 300K | 205K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $0.24 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Amazon Nova Lite: 32.5 (#270)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 48.1 (#58)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1239 | 1381 |
| ALE-Bench | 236.25 | 618.17 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 75.8% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1387 |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | — | 68.3% |
| LiveBench Coding | 27.5% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Amazon Nova Lite: —
- MiniMax-M2.5: 30.4 (#77)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 42.7% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | -23.16 |

## Reasoning

- Amazon Nova Lite: 19.3 (#260)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 17.5 (#292)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1372 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 4.9% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 55.2% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 16.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 63.7% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 36.7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 37.2% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 146.68 |
| LiveBench | 36.4% | — |

## Math

- Amazon Nova Lite: 27.8 (#247)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 26.9 (#253)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1227 | 1378 |
| ProofBench | — | 4% |
| Omni-MATH | 23.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 36.7% | — |

## Knowledge

- Amazon Nova Lite: 26.3 (#259)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 39.2 (#135)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | 9.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1201 | 1379 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 3.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 60% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.7% | — |
| MMLU | 77% | — |

## Multimodal

- Amazon Nova Lite: 25.5 (#123)
- MiniMax-M2.5: —

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 990 | — |

## Multilingual

- Amazon Nova Lite: 38.0 (#232)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 47.1 (#152)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1208 | 1338 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | 1393 |
| LMArena French | 1237 | 1362 |
| LMArena German | 1229 | 1362 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1153 | 1171 |
| LMArena Korean | 1153 | 1232 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1358 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1226 | 1354 |

## Instruction Following

- Amazon Nova Lite: 59.3 (#255)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 71.5 (#148)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1205 | 1353 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 54.1% | — |
| IFEval | 77.6% | — |

## Long Context

- Amazon Nova Lite: 37.4 (#217)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 37.5 (#216)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1234 | 1366 |
| CL-bench | — | 11.4% |
| CL-bench Life | — | 6.3% |

## Writing & Preference

- Amazon Nova Lite: 42.1 (#237)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 53.9 (#153)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1229 | 1359 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1197 | 1331 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1199 | 1364 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1361 |
| WildBench | 75% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 25.9% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Amazon Nova Lite better than MiniMax-M2.5?

MiniMax-M2.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.3 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index. Amazon Nova Lite costs 5.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax-M2.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Lite or MiniMax-M2.5?

Amazon Nova Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.24 per million output tokens; MiniMax-M2.5 lists at $0.30 and $1.20.

### Is Amazon Nova Lite or MiniMax-M2.5 better for coding?

MiniMax-M2.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.1 versus 32.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Amazon Nova Lite does, with 300K tokens against 205K.

### How many benchmarks do Amazon Nova Lite and MiniMax-M2.5 share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Lite has 34 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.5 has 33.