Model comparison
DeepSeek-V3 vs Nova 2 Lite
DeepSeek-V3 and Nova 2 Lite score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.5 vs 39.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.
DeepSeekSummary
- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-V3 scores higher in 4 categories and Nova 2 Lite in 4 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Nova 2 Lite leads 27.5 to 20.5.
- DeepSeek-V3 is cheaper at $0.24 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Nova 2 Lite.
- Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 164K.
- DeepSeek-V3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| DeepSeek-V3 | Nova 2 Lite | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Amazon |
| Noometry Index | 39.5 | 39.7 |
| Released | 2024-12-26 | 2025-12-01 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 164K | 1M |
| Max output | 164K | 64K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.24 | $0.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.90 | $2.50 |
| Results tracked | 60 | 19 |
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Category by category
Coding DeepSeek-V3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 42.3 (#106), Nova 2 Lite: 40.7 (#134)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1368 | 1385 |
| Aider Polyglot | 55.1% | — |
| SciCode | 35.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 36.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 50% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 70.9% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 62.2% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 86.6% | — |
| MBPP+ | 73% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
DeepSeek-V3: —, Nova 2 Lite: 24.1 (#121)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 27.1% |
| METR Time Horizons | 49.6% | — |
Reasoning Nova 2 Lite leads
DeepSeek-V3: 20.5 (#236), Nova 2 Lite: 27.5 (#118)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1365 | 1364 |
| SimpleBench | 27.2% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 52.3% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 65.8% | — |
| DTBench | 64.8% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 60.9% | — |
| LMCA | 15.5% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 87.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 135.94 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.1 | — |
| HellaSwag | 88.9% | — |
| LiveBench | 66.9% | — |
| PIQA | 84.7% | — |
| WinoGrande | 85.2% | — |
Math Nova 2 Lite leads
DeepSeek-V3: 32.1 (#219), Nova 2 Lite: 37.5 (#156)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1373 | 1359 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 37.8% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 40.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 73.5% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 75.5% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 1.7% | — |
Knowledge Nova 2 Lite leads
DeepSeek-V3: 37.5 (#155), Nova 2 Lite: 43.0 (#94)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1351 | 1358 |
| GPQA Diamond | 67.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 72.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 26.1% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 53.8% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 95.3% | — |
| MMLU | 87.2% | — |
| TriviaQA | 82.9% | — |
Multilingual DeepSeek-V3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 48.5 (#143), Nova 2 Lite: 47.1 (#153)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1358 | 1337 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1391 | 1364 |
| LMArena French | 1385 | 1381 |
| LMArena German | 1374 | 1343 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1333 | 1271 |
| LMArena Korean | 1319 | 1284 |
| LMArena Russian | 1373 | 1343 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1358 | 1373 |
Instruction Following DeepSeek-V3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 72.8 (#130), Nova 2 Lite: 70.5 (#161)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1345 | 1335 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 81.5% | — |
| IFEval | 83.2% | — |
Long Context Nova 2 Lite leads
DeepSeek-V3: 34.0 (#253), Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#150)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1352 | 1335 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 50% | — |
Writing & Preference DeepSeek-V3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 57.4 (#130), Nova 2 Lite: 53.9 (#154)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1375 | 1362 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1364 | 1291 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1389 | 1338 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1472 | — |
| WildBench | 83% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 49.1% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is DeepSeek-V3 better than Nova 2 Lite?
DeepSeek-V3 and Nova 2 Lite score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.5 vs 39.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-V3 or Nova 2 Lite?
DeepSeek-V3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.24 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Nova 2 Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.
Is DeepSeek-V3 or Nova 2 Lite better for coding?
DeepSeek-V3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.3 versus 40.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Nova 2 Lite does, with 1M tokens against 164K.
How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-V3 and Nova 2 Lite share?
18 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-V3 has 60 scored results on Noometry and Nova 2 Lite has 19.