LLM·Dex

Llama 4 70B vs Amazon Nova Lite

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Verdict by category
  • PriceAmazon Nova Lite

    Amazon Nova Lite publishes pricing ($0.24 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 70B does not.

  • Context windowAmazon Nova Lite

    Amazon Nova Lite accepts 300K tokens vs 128K, 2.3× the room for long documents and codebases.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text, vision.

  • OpennessLlama 4 70B

    Llama 4 70B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License); Amazon Nova Lite is API-only.

On balance Amazon Nova Lite edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Llama 4 70B's 1. Amazon Nova Lite publishes pricing ($0.24 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 70B does not. Amazon Nova Lite accepts 300K tokens vs 128K, 2.3× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. Both target the same set of modalities (text, vision), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Llama 4 70B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License); Amazon Nova Lite is API-only.

Llama 4 70B is the newer of the two, released 4 months after Amazon Nova Lite, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Llama 4 70B is usually picked for open source llm and edge deployment workloads, while Amazon Nova Lite sees more deployments in customer support and cheapest llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecLlama 4 70BAmazon Nova Lite
ProviderMetaOther
ReleasedApr 2025Dec 2024
Modalitiestext, visiontext, vision
Context window128K tokens300K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$0.060 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$0.24 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Llama 4 Community License)No
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day, vs $0.540
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $5.40
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $10.44

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Llama 4 70BPricing unavailable
  • Amazon Nova Lite$0.018

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Benchmark scores not yet available. We only publish numbers we can source from official model cards or independent leaderboards, see methodology.
Pick Llama 4 70B if

Llama 4 70B fits when…

  • Self-hostable on commodity hardware
  • Strong all-rounder
  • Mature tooling (vLLM, SGLang)
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Llama 4 Community License).
Pick Amazon Nova Lite if

Amazon Nova Lite fits when…

  • Very cheap
  • AWS-native
  • Multimodal
  • Long-context tasks, handles 300K tokens vs 128K for Llama 4 70B.
Don't want either?

Consider Llama 4 405B

Meta's flagship open-weight model, sparse MoE design competitive with closed-frontier flagships.

Frequently asked

  • Is Llama 4 70B or Amazon Nova Lite cheaper?
    Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Amazon Nova Lite accepts 300K tokens vs 128K for Llama 4 70B.
  • Is Llama 4 70B or Amazon Nova Lite better for coding?
    Both Llama 4 70B and Amazon Nova Lite are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    Llama 4 70B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License). Amazon Nova Lite is API-only.
  • When were Llama 4 70B and Amazon Nova Lite released?
    Llama 4 70B was released by Meta on 2025-04-05. Amazon Nova Lite was released by Other on 2024-12-03.
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