# GPT-3.5-turbo vs Nova 2 Lite

> Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 23.1 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-3-5-turbo-vs-nova-2-lite
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-3.5-turbo scores higher in 0 categories and Nova 2 Lite in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Nova 2 Lite leads 42.5 to 10.0.
- GPT-3.5-turbo is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Nova 2 Lite.
- Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 16K.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-3.5-turbo | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Amazon |
| Noometry Index | 23.1 | 39.0 |
| Rank | 345 | 161 |
| Context | 16K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $1.50 | $2.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 23.5 (#326)
- Nova 2 Lite: 40.1 (#131)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1137 | 1386 |
| WeirdML | 3.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 39.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.6% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 70.7% | — |
| MBPP+ | 69.7% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-3.5-turbo: —
- Nova 2 Lite: 23.9 (#114)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 27.1% |
| METR Time Horizons | 21.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 13.3 (#328)
- Nova 2 Lite: 26.4 (#120)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1108 | 1364 |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 3% | — |
| DTBench | 48.5% | — |
| LMCA | 9.7% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | 58.1% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 61.6% | — |
| CommonsenseQA 2.0 | 57% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.48 | — |
| ForecastBench | 50.4 | — |
| WinoGrande | 81.6% | — |

## Math

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 6.0 (#321)
- Nova 2 Lite: 34.8 (#154)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1142 | 1359 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 0% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.2% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 15.9% | — |
| GSM8K | 57.8% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 10.0 (#298)
- Nova 2 Lite: 42.5 (#88)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1070 | 1360 |
| GPQA Diamond | 28% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 87.4% | — |
| BoolQ | 87% | — |
| MMLU | 71.4% | — |
| OpenBookQA | 86% | — |
| TriviaQA | 85.8% | — |

## Multilingual

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 31.6 (#253)
- Nova 2 Lite: 47.3 (#148)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1108 | 1337 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1075 | 1364 |
| LMArena French | 1117 | 1381 |
| LMArena German | 1090 | 1343 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1043 | 1273 |
| LMArena Korean | 1019 | 1284 |
| LMArena Russian | 1123 | 1343 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1120 | 1372 |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 58.1 (#257)
- Nova 2 Lite: 70.7 (#156)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1119 | 1335 |

## Long Context

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 34.0 (#249)
- Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#145)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1121 | 1335 |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 25.4 (#300)
- Nova 2 Lite: 54.1 (#150)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1125 | 1362 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1092 | 1291 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1117 | 1338 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 451 | — |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-3.5-turbo better than Nova 2 Lite?

Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 23.1 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, GPT-3.5-turbo or Nova 2 Lite?

GPT-3.5-turbo is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Nova 2 Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.

### Is GPT-3.5-turbo or Nova 2 Lite better for coding?

Nova 2 Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 23.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Nova 2 Lite does, with 1M tokens against 16K.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-3.5-turbo and Nova 2 Lite share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-3.5-turbo has 44 scored results on Noometry and Nova 2 Lite has 19.