# Nova 2 Lite vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

> Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.7 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/nova-2-lite-vs-qwen2-5-72b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Nova 2 Lite scores higher in 9 categories and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Nova 2 Lite leads 37.5 to 19.3.
- Nova 2 Lite is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1.40 / $5.60 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
- Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.7 | 31.9 |
| Rank | 161 | 267 |
| Context | 1M | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $1.40 |
| Output $/M | $2.50 | $5.60 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Nova 2 Lite: 40.7 (#134)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 33.2 (#260)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1385 | 1292 |
| WeirdML | — | 16% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.8% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 55.9% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Nova 2 Lite: 24.1 (#121)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.1 (#133)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | — |
| TheAgentCompany | — | 5.7% |
| BALROG | — | 16.2% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 35.8% |

## Reasoning

- Nova 2 Lite: 27.5 (#118)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.3 (#199)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | 1271 |
| DTBench | — | 62.9% |
| LMCA | — | 13.4% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 79.8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 129 |
| ForecastBench | — | 57.5 |
| HellaSwag | — | 84.8% |
| PIQA | — | 82.6% |
| WinoGrande | — | 82.3% |

## Math

- Nova 2 Lite: 37.5 (#156)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 19.3 (#287)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1283 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 8.1% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 33% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 63.2% |

## Knowledge

- Nova 2 Lite: 43.0 (#94)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 27.0 (#253)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1245 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 49.1% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 63.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 19.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 42.6% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 94.5% |
| MMLU | — | 85.3% |
| TriviaQA | — | 71.9% |

## Multilingual

- Nova 2 Lite: 47.1 (#153)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.0 (#213)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1337 | 1252 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1364 | 1272 |
| LMArena French | 1381 | 1280 |
| LMArena German | 1343 | 1234 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1271 | 1180 |
| LMArena Korean | 1284 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1264 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1373 | 1256 |

## Instruction Following

- Nova 2 Lite: 70.5 (#161)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.5 (#221)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1335 | 1254 |
| IFEval | — | 80.6% |

## Long Context

- Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#150)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#188)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1335 | 1282 |

## Writing & Preference

- Nova 2 Lite: 53.9 (#154)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.7 (#215)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1362 | 1269 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1291 | 1221 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1338 | 1272 |
| WildBench | — | 80.2% |

## FAQ

### Is Nova 2 Lite better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Nova 2 Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.7 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Nova 2 Lite or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Nova 2 Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct lists at $1.40 and $5.60.

### Is Nova 2 Lite or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better for coding?

Nova 2 Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.7 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Nova 2 Lite does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Nova 2 Lite and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nova 2 Lite has 19 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43.