Amazon Nova Lite vs Phi-3.5 Medium
A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.
- PriceAmazon Nova Lite
Amazon Nova Lite publishes pricing ($0.24 / 1M output tokens) while Phi-3.5 Medium 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.
- ModalitiesAmazon Nova Lite
Amazon Nova Lite supports 2 modalities (text, vision) vs 1 for Phi-3.5 Medium.
- OpennessPhi-3.5 Medium
Phi-3.5 Medium ships open weights (MIT); Amazon Nova Lite is API-only.
On balance Amazon Nova Lite edges ahead, winning 3 of 5 categories against Phi-3.5 Medium's 1. Amazon Nova Lite publishes pricing ($0.24 / 1M output tokens) while Phi-3.5 Medium 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. They differ in modality coverage, Amazon Nova Lite handles text, vision while Phi-3.5 Medium handles text, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. Phi-3.5 Medium ships open weights (MIT); Amazon Nova Lite is API-only.
Amazon Nova Lite is the newer of the two, released 4 months after Phi-3.5 Medium, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Amazon Nova Lite is usually picked for customer support and cheapest llm workloads, while Phi-3.5 Medium sees more deployments in on device and edge deployment. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | Amazon Nova Lite | Phi-3.5 Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Other | Microsoft |
| Released | Dec 2024 | Aug 2024 |
| Modalities | text, vision | text |
| Context window | 300K tokens | 128K tokens |
| Max output | , | , |
| Input · 1M | $0.060 / 1M tokens | Pricing not published |
| Output · 1M | $0.24 / 1M tokens | Pricing not published |
| Knowledge cutoff | , | , |
| Open weights | No | Yes (MIT) |
| API available | Yes | Yes |
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$0.540 vs ,
- Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$5.40 vs ,
- RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$10.44 vs ,
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).
Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.
- Amazon Nova Lite$0.018
- Phi-3.5 MediumPricing unavailable
Benchmarks compared
Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.
- MMLU,78.9
Amazon Nova Lite fits when…
- Very cheap
- AWS-native
- Multimodal
- Long-context tasks, handles 300K tokens vs 128K for Phi-3.5 Medium.
- Multimodal needs covering vision.
Phi-3.5 Medium fits when…
- MIT license
- 128k context
- Strong reasoning at 14B
- Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (MIT).
Consider DBRX
Databricks' 132B MoE, a notable 2024 open-weight release tuned for enterprise.
Frequently asked
Is Amazon Nova Lite or Phi-3.5 Medium 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 Phi-3.5 Medium.Is Amazon Nova Lite or Phi-3.5 Medium better for coding?
Both Amazon Nova Lite and Phi-3.5 Medium 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?
Phi-3.5 Medium ships open weights (MIT). Amazon Nova Lite is API-only.When were Amazon Nova Lite and Phi-3.5 Medium released?
Amazon Nova Lite was released by Other on 2024-12-03. Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20.
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