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Nova Micro vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

Nova Micro and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct are closely matched at 1.9 and 1.4 on the LLM Stats Score.

Amazon · Microsoft · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Nova Micro and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 1.9 and 1.4.

In the 7 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Nova Micro wins 4; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Nova Micro

  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 4 of 7 exact shared results
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Nov 2024

Choose Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

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

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Nova Micro
Amazon
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Microsoft
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
1.9
#354
1.4
#358
Reasoning
1.2
#349
0.9
#351
Coding
2.5
#259
-3.9
#290
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
4 of 7
3 of 7
Input price
$0.03 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.14 / M
— / M
Context window
128,000
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

2 shared
Index
Nova Micro
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Math
9.1#276
4.3#306
Finance
1.4#199
4.3#189
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

17 reported for Nova Micro · 31 for Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

7 shared

Nova Micro outperforms in 4 benchmarks (GPQA, GSM8k, HumanEval, MATH), while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is better at 3 benchmarks (ARC-C, MMLU, SQuALITY).

Nova Micro has a slight edge in benchmark performance.

Fri Nov 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Nova Micro specifies input context (128,000 tokens). Only Nova Micro specifies output context (128,000 tokens).

Amazon
Nova Micro
Input128,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Microsoft
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Fri Nov 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

License

Usage and distribution terms

Nova Micro 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 Micro

Proprietary

Closed source

Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

MIT

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

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

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

Nova Micro

Nov 20, 2024

2.0 years ago

2mo newer
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

Aug 23, 2024

2.2 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?

Judge for yourself.

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

Nova Micro
✓ Preferred
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

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

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

Nova Micro and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct are closely matched on the LLM Stats Score at 1.9 and 1.4. Nova Micro is made by Amazon and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is made by Microsoft. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

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

Nova Micro scores GSM8k: 92.3%, ARC-C: 90.2%, Translation Set1→en COMET22: 88.7%, Translation en→Set1 COMET22: 88.5%, IFEval: 87.2%. 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 Micro and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

Nova Micro supports 128K 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 Micro and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (1.9 vs 1.4), licensing (Proprietary vs MIT). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

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

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

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