# Nova 2 Lite vs Qwen3-30B-A3B

> Nova 2 Lite and Qwen3-30B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.0 vs 38.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/nova-2-lite-vs-qwen3-30b-a3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 18

## Summary

- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Nova 2 Lite scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 5 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in long context, where Nova 2 Lite leads 40.6 to 31.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 27.1% for Nova 2 Lite and 41.4% for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
- Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper at $0.12 / $0.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Nova 2 Lite.
- Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 41K.
- Qwen3-30B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.0 | 38.5 |
| Rank | 161 | 174 |
| Context | 1M | 41K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.12 |
| Output $/M | $2.50 | $0.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Nova 2 Lite: 40.1 (#131)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.0 (#188)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1386 | 1416 |
| SciCode | — | 33.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 29.8% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Nova 2 Lite: 23.9 (#114)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.5 (#75)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | 41.4% |

## Reasoning

- Nova 2 Lite: 26.4 (#120)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 21.6 (#193)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | 1398 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 8% |
| DTBench | — | 69.3% |
| LMCA | — | 22.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 139.63 |

## Math

- Nova 2 Lite: 34.8 (#154)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 36.0 (#133)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1394 |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 47.8% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 70.3% |

## Knowledge

- Nova 2 Lite: 42.5 (#88)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.7 (#96)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1360 | 1395 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 70.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 12.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |

## Multilingual

- Nova 2 Lite: 47.3 (#148)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.8 (#126)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1337 | 1372 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1364 | 1434 |
| LMArena French | 1381 | 1419 |
| LMArena German | 1343 | 1379 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1273 | 1338 |
| LMArena Korean | 1284 | 1333 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1369 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1372 | 1403 |

## Instruction Following

- Nova 2 Lite: 70.7 (#156)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.2 (#137)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1335 | 1364 |

## Long Context

- Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#145)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#278)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1335 | 1379 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 40.6% |

## Writing & Preference

- Nova 2 Lite: 54.1 (#150)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.9 (#138)

| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1362 | 1384 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1291 | 1318 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1338 | 1378 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75.3% |

## FAQ

### Is Nova 2 Lite better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Nova 2 Lite and Qwen3-30B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.0 vs 38.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; Nova 2 Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.

### Is Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?

Nova 2 Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 37.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Nova 2 Lite does, with 1M tokens against 41K.

### How many benchmarks do Nova 2 Lite and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nova 2 Lite has 19 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.