# Nova 2 Lite vs Qwen3 235B-A22B

> Qwen3 235B-A22B is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 39.7 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/nova-2-lite-vs-qwen3-235b-a22b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 19

## Summary

- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Nova 2 Lite scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3 235B-A22B in 8 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 235B-A22B leads 50.4 to 37.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 27.1% for Nova 2 Lite and 52.1% for Qwen3 235B-A22B.
- Nova 2 Lite is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.70 / $2.80 for Qwen3 235B-A22B.
- Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Qwen3 235B-A22B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.7 | 43.5 |
| Rank | 161 | 91 |
| Context | 1M | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.70 |
| Output $/M | $2.50 | $2.80 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Nova 2 Lite: 40.7 (#134)
- Qwen3 235B-A22B: 44.3 (#75)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1385 | 1445 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 59.6% |
| SciCode | — | 42.4% |
| WeirdML | — | 41% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Nova 2 Lite: 24.1 (#121)
- Qwen3 235B-A22B: 33.9 (#51)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | 52.1% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | -11.34 |

## Reasoning

- Nova 2 Lite: 27.5 (#118)
- Qwen3 235B-A22B: 15.7 (#311)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | 1433 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 1.3% |
| SimpleBench | — | 31% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 69.4% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 11% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 12% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 9% |
| DTBench | — | 80.3% |
| LMCA | — | 29.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 143.85 |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.7 |

## Math

- Nova 2 Lite: 37.5 (#156)
- Qwen3 235B-A22B: 50.4 (#57)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1432 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 86.7% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 71.8% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 68.9% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 8.5% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |

## Knowledge

- Nova 2 Lite: 43.0 (#94)
- Qwen3 235B-A22B: 49.6 (#73)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | 9.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1463 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 80.1% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 40.4% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 84.4% |
| Confabulations | — | 15.6% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 72.7% |

## Multilingual

- Nova 2 Lite: 47.1 (#153)
- Qwen3 235B-A22B: 52.3 (#89)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1337 | 1409 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1364 | 1481 |
| LMArena French | 1381 | 1445 |
| LMArena German | 1343 | 1433 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1271 | 1399 |
| LMArena Korean | 1284 | 1391 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1411 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1373 | 1430 |

## Instruction Following

- Nova 2 Lite: 70.5 (#161)
- Qwen3 235B-A22B: 72.6 (#136)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1335 | 1408 |
| IFEval | — | 83.5% |

## Long Context

- Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#150)
- Qwen3 235B-A22B: 46.1 (#26)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1335 | 1426 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 75% |

## Writing & Preference

- Nova 2 Lite: 53.9 (#154)
- Qwen3 235B-A22B: 59.6 (#108)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1362 | 1419 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1291 | 1384 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1338 | 1432 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 83% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1366 |
| WildBench | — | 86.6% |

## FAQ

### Is Nova 2 Lite better than Qwen3 235B-A22B?

Qwen3 235B-A22B is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 39.7 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3 235B-A22B?

Nova 2 Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Qwen3 235B-A22B lists at $0.70 and $2.80.

### Is Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3 235B-A22B better for coding?

Qwen3 235B-A22B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.3 versus 40.7 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 Qwen3 235B-A22B share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nova 2 Lite has 19 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 235B-A22B has 49.