Amazon · language model
Nova Lite 1.0: pricing, context and benchmarks
Nova Lite 1.0 is Amazon's model released on December 5, 2024. It costs $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.24 per million output tokens, with a 300K-token context window. No independent score has been published for it so far.
| Price | 27/30 | |
|---|---|---|
| Context | 9/15 | |
| Features | 5/15 |
What you need to know about Nova Lite 1.0
Amazon, based in United States, put Nova Lite 1.0 online on December 5, 2024. It accepts text and images as input and produces text. Its context window reaches 300,000 tokens, larger than 59 % of the models in the registry, and it can write up to 5,120 tokens in one go.
Released more than 1 year ago, it belongs to a generation most vendors have since superseded.
Nova Lite 1.0 pricing
On OpenRouter, Nova Lite 1.0 costs $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.24 per million output tokens. Counting three tokens read for every token written, its average price is $0.105 per million, more expensive than 9 % of paid models (7.3 times cheaper than the median of $0.76).
A concrete example: a task that sends 2,000 tokens (about 1,500 words) and receives a 500-token answer costs $0.0002. At 1,000 tasks a day, budget $7 a month. The price calculator redoes this with your own volumes.
Performance and benchmarks
Epoch AI does not yet publish a capabilities index for Nova Lite 1.0. We therefore show no made-up performance rating: only price, context and features count towards its score.
Features, privacy and local use
- It supports tool calling, so it can drive an AI agent, call APIs or MCP servers.
- Its knowledge stops at October 2024.
Its weights are not published: it can only be used through the Amazon API or a broker such as OpenRouter, which means sending your data off your machines.
Other Amazon models
| Model | Released | Avg. price | ECI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nova 2 Lite | Dec 2, 2025 | $0.85 | — |
| Nova Premier 1.0 | Oct 31, 2025 | $5 | — |
| Nova Micro 1.0 | Dec 5, 2024 | $0.06 | — |
| Nova Pro 1.0 | Dec 5, 2024 | $1.4 | — |
Verdict
Computed score: 68/100, from public data (performance, price, context, features).
Strengths
- Low price: cheaper than 91 % of paid models.
Limitations
- No independent score published: performance cannot be verified.
- Older generation, often replaced by a newer model from the same vendor.
Avoid if…
- your data must not leave your servers.
Alternatives
- Gemma 4 26B A4B$0.11
- Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B$0.11
- Ling 3.1 Flash$0.11
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning$0.1
- Nex-N2.5-Pro$0.12
- Qwen3 Coder 30B A3B Instruct$0.12
Comparisons and tools
Learn more
Frequently asked questions
How much does Nova Lite 1.0 cost?
$0.06 per million input tokens and $0.24 per million output tokens on OpenRouter (checked October 25, 2026). A task with 2,000 tokens read and 500 written costs $0.0002.
How big is Nova Lite 1.0's context window?
300,000 tokens, roughly 225,000 words, with a maximum of 5,120 output tokens.
Can Nova Lite 1.0 run locally?
No, Amazon does not publish its weights: it is API-only.
Is Nova Lite 1.0 suitable for an AI agent?
Technically yes: it supports tool calling. Then check its cost for your volume.
What are the alternatives to Nova Lite 1.0?
The closest models on price and performance are Gemma 4 26B A4B, Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B, and Ling 3.1 Flash.
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Neutrality. No affiliate links. No vendor pays to be reviewed, rated or ranked. Reviews are directed by François Chollet, neutral and factual, and every data point is dated and sourced. How we score