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Amazon Nova Lite vs Qwen3-72B

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

Updated

Amazon Nova Lite specs · Qwen3-72B specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceAmazon Nova Lite

    Amazon Nova Lite publishes pricing ($0.24 / 1M output tokens) while Qwen3-72B 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 Qwen3-72B.

  • OpennessQwen3-72B

    Qwen3-72B ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Amazon Nova Lite is API-only.

On balance Amazon Nova Lite edges ahead, winning 3 of 5 categories against Qwen3-72B's 1. Amazon Nova Lite publishes pricing ($0.24 / 1M output tokens) while Qwen3-72B 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 Qwen3-72B handles text, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. Qwen3-72B ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Amazon Nova Lite is API-only.

Qwen3-72B is the newer of the two, released 5 months after Amazon Nova Lite, 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 Qwen3-72B sees more deployments in open source llm and commercial use llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecAmazon Nova LiteQwen3-72B
ProviderOtherAlibaba
ReleasedDec 2024Apr 2025
Modalitiestext, visiontext
Context window300K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1M$0.060 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Output · 1M$0.24 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsNoYes (Apache-2.0)
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$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).

Price calculator

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
  • Qwen3-72BPricing unavailable

Benchmarks compared

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

Amazon Nova LiteQwen3-72B
  • MMLU,84.0
Pick Amazon Nova Lite if

Amazon Nova Lite fits when…

  • Very cheap
  • AWS-native
  • Multimodal
  • Long-context tasks, handles 300K tokens vs 128K for Qwen3-72B.
  • Multimodal needs covering vision.
Pick Qwen3-72B if

Qwen3-72B fits when…

  • Apache-2.0 license
  • Strongest open-weight on Chinese
  • Strong multilingual coverage
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Apache-2.0).
Don't want either?

Consider DBRX

Databricks' 132B MoE, a notable 2024 open-weight release tuned for enterprise.

See DBRX specsAmazon Nova Lite vs DBRXQwen3-72B vs DBRX

Frequently asked

  • Is Amazon Nova Lite or Qwen3-72B 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 Qwen3-72B.
  • Is Amazon Nova Lite or Qwen3-72B better for coding?
    Both Amazon Nova Lite and Qwen3-72B 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?
    Qwen3-72B ships open weights (Apache-2.0). Amazon Nova Lite is API-only.
  • When were Amazon Nova Lite and Qwen3-72B released?
    Amazon Nova Lite was released by Other on 2024-12-03. Qwen3-72B was released by Alibaba on 2025-04-29.
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