Model Comparison

Nova Lite vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instructWhich is better in 2026?

Nova Lite significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Verdict: Nova Lite vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct — which is better?

Nova Lite (by Amazon) and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct (by Microsoft) are two of the AI models people compare most. Here is how they stack up on benchmarks, price and capabilities, and which one to pick in 2026.

Nova Lite outperforms in 6 benchmarks (ARC-C, GPQA, GSM8k, HumanEval, MATH, MMLU), while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is better at 1 benchmark (SQuALITY). Nova Lite significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Choose Nova Lite if…

  • you want the strongest raw capability — it leads on 6 of 7 shared benchmarks
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Nov 2024

Choose Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct if…

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

Performance Benchmarks

Comparative analysis across standard metrics

7 benchmarks

Nova Lite outperforms in 6 benchmarks (ARC-C, GPQA, GSM8k, HumanEval, MATH, MMLU), while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is better at 1 benchmark (SQuALITY).

Nova Lite significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Sat Jul 18 2026 • llm-stats.com

Arena Performance

Human preference votes

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Nova Lite specifies input context (300,000 tokens). Only Nova Lite specifies output context (2,048 tokens).

Amazon
Nova Lite
Input300,000 tokens
Output2,048 tokens
Microsoft
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Sat Jul 18 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input Capabilities

Supported data types and modalities

Nova Lite supports multimodal inputs, whereas Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct does not.

Nova Lite can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Nova Lite

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Nova Lite is licensed under a proprietary license, while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct uses MIT.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Nova Lite

Proprietary

Closed source

Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

MIT

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Nova Lite was released on 2024-11-20, while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct was released on 2024-08-23.

Nova Lite is 3 months newer than Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct.

Nova Lite

Nov 20, 2024

1.7 years ago

2mo newer
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

Aug 23, 2024

1.9 years ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Key Takeaways

Amazon
Larger context window (300,000 tokens)
Supports multimodal inputs
Higher ARC-C score (92.4% vs 91.0%)
Higher GPQA score (42.0% vs 36.8%)
Higher GSM8k score (94.5% vs 88.7%)
Higher HumanEval score (85.4% vs 70.7%)
Higher MATH score (73.3% vs 59.5%)
Higher MMLU score (80.5% vs 78.9%)
Microsoft
Has open weights
Higher SQuALITY score (24.1% vs 19.2%)

Detailed Comparison

Interactive Arena

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Nova Lite and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Nova Lite
✓ Preferred
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Open in Playground
AI Model Comparison Table
Feature
Amazon
Nova Lite
Microsoft
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

FAQ

Common questions about Nova Lite vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct.

Which is better, Nova Lite or Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

Nova Lite significantly outperforms across most benchmarks. Nova Lite is made by Amazon and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is made by Microsoft. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their benchmark scores, pricing, and capabilities above.

How does Nova Lite compare to Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct in benchmarks?

Nova Lite scores GSM8k: 94.5%, ARC-C: 92.4%, DocVQA: 92.4%, IFEval: 89.7%, Translation en→Set1 COMET22: 88.8%. Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct scores ARC-C: 91.0%, OpenBookQA: 89.6%, GSM8k: 88.7%, PIQA: 88.6%, RULER: 87.1%.

What are the context window sizes for Nova Lite and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

Nova Lite supports 300K tokens and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Nova Lite and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

Key differences include multimodal support (yes vs no), licensing (Proprietary vs MIT). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Nova Lite and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

Nova Lite is developed by Amazon and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is developed by Microsoft.

Related comparisons