# Amazon Nova Lite vs o3-mini

> o3-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index. Amazon Nova Lite costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/amazon-nova-lite-vs-o3-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 24

## Summary

- They share 24 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Lite scores higher in 2 categories and o3-mini in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in instruction following, where o3-mini leads 75.1 to 59.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is LiveBench Coding: 27.5% for Amazon Nova Lite and 82.7% for o3-mini.
- Amazon Nova Lite is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.24 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o3-mini.
- Amazon Nova Lite accepts more context: 300K tokens versus 200K.

## Snapshot

| | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 36.7 |
| Rank | 265 | 212 |
| Context | 300K | 200K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $1.10 |
| Output $/M | $0.24 | $4.40 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Amazon Nova Lite: 32.5 (#270)
- o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Coding | 27.5% | 82.7% |
| LMArena Coding | 1239 | 1378 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 60.4% |
| SciCode | — | 39.8% |
| GSO | — | 1.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| CadEval | — | 54% |
| ALE-Bench | 236.25 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Amazon Nova Lite: —
- o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |

## Reasoning

- Amazon Nova Lite: 19.3 (#260)
- o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Reasoning | 36.7% | 89.6% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1366 |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 37.2% | 70.6% |
| LiveBench | 36.4% | 75.9% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 3% |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 34.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 7% |
| DTBench | — | 68.8% |
| LMCA | — | 19% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 140.34 |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.6 |

## Math

- Amazon Nova Lite: 27.8 (#247)
- o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | 36.7% | 77.3% |
| LMArena Math | 1227 | 1396 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 76.9% |
| Omni-MATH | 23.3% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |

## Knowledge

- Amazon Nova Lite: 26.3 (#259)
- o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1201 | 1364 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 77% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 3.6% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.3% |
| MMLU-Pro | 60% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.7% | — |
| MMLU | 77% | — |

## Multimodal

- Amazon Nova Lite: 25.5 (#123)
- o3-mini: —

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 990 | — |

## Multilingual

- Amazon Nova Lite: 38.0 (#232)
- o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1208 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | 1379 |
| LMArena French | 1237 | 1334 |
| LMArena German | 1229 | 1303 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1153 | 1286 |
| LMArena Korean | 1153 | 1314 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1304 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1226 | 1321 |

## Instruction Following

- Amazon Nova Lite: 59.3 (#255)
- o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 54.1% | 84.4% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1205 | 1337 |
| IFEval | 77.6% | — |

## Long Context

- Amazon Nova Lite: 37.4 (#217)
- o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1234 | 1343 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |

## Writing & Preference

- Amazon Nova Lite: 42.1 (#237)
- o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1229 | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1197 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1199 | 1320 |
| LiveBench Language | 25.9% | 50.7% |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |
| WildBench | 75% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Amazon Nova Lite better than o3-mini?

o3-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index. Amazon Nova Lite costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Lite or o3-mini?

Amazon Nova Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.24 per million output tokens; o3-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

### Is Amazon Nova Lite or o3-mini better for coding?

o3-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 32.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Amazon Nova Lite does, with 300K tokens against 200K.

### How many benchmarks do Amazon Nova Lite and o3-mini share?

24 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Lite has 34 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.