# Mercury vs Nova 2 Lite

> Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 37.3 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-vs-nova-2-lite
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 8

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury scores higher in 0 categories and Nova 2 Lite in 6 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nova 2 Lite leads 26.4 to 16.8.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Amazon |
| Noometry Index | 37.3 | 39.0 |
| Rank | 192 | 161 |
| Context | — | 1M |
| Input $/M | — | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | — | $2.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mercury: 38.1 (#164)
- Nova 2 Lite: 40.1 (#131)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1323 | 1386 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mercury: —
- Nova 2 Lite: 23.9 (#114)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 27.1% |

## Reasoning

- Mercury: 16.8 (#288)
- Nova 2 Lite: 26.4 (#120)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1284 | 1364 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 21.6% | — |

## Math

- Mercury: —
- Nova 2 Lite: 34.8 (#154)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1359 |

## Knowledge

- Mercury: —
- Nova 2 Lite: 42.5 (#88)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1360 |

## Multilingual

- Mercury: 41.7 (#201)
- Nova 2 Lite: 47.3 (#148)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1259 | 1337 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1364 |
| LMArena French | — | 1381 |
| LMArena German | — | 1343 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1273 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1284 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1343 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1372 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury: 65.3 (#220)
- Nova 2 Lite: 70.7 (#156)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1238 | 1335 |

## Long Context

- Mercury: 38.3 (#193)
- Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#145)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1264 | 1335 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury: 46.2 (#216)
- Nova 2 Lite: 54.1 (#150)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1282 | 1362 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1186 | 1291 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1283 | 1338 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury better than Nova 2 Lite?

Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 37.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Mercury or Nova 2 Lite better for coding?

Nova 2 Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 38.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury and Nova 2 Lite share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury has 9 scored results on Noometry and Nova 2 Lite has 19.