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AI Choice Engine

Model comparison

Amazon Nova 2 Lite vs DeepSeek R1

Amazon against DeepSeek, compared on context, price, and attributed benchmark results.

Amazon Nova 2 Lite: profile checked October 25, 2026DeepSeek R1: profile checked October 25, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: Insufficient data — see receipts below

Amazon

Amazon Nova 2 Lite

Balanced

vs

DeepSeek

DeepSeek R1

Balanced · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationAmazon Nova 2 LiteDeepSeek R1
ProviderAmazonDeepSeek
TierBalancedBalanced
Context windowWinner: 1M128K
Max outputNot verifiedUnverifiedNot verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens$0.30Not verifiedUnverified
Output / 1M tokens$2.50Not verifiedUnverified
WeightsClosedOpen
ParametersNot verifiedUnverified671B total / 37B active (MoE)
Reasoning levelslow, medium, highNot verifiedUnverified
Modalitiestext, image, videotext
LicenseNot verifiedUnverifiedMIT
API model idamazon.nova-2-lite-v1:0Not verifiedUnverified
ReleasedDecember 2, 2025January 20, 2025

Dates beside benchmark scores refer to the linked source’s publication or capture date unless that source explicitly states when it measured the result. A shared URL alone does not establish comparable runs; unverified setups are marked. Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Pricing tiers

Amazon Nova 2 Lite: Bedrock Global Standard $0.30/$2.50 per MTok, cached input $0.075 and cache writes $0. Single-region $0.33/$2.75, cached $0.0825 and writes $0. Global Flex/Batch $0.15/$1.25; regional $0.165/$1.375. Global Flex cache reads $0.0375; regional $0.04125. Global Priority $0.525/$4.375, cached $0.13125; regional $0.5775/$4.8125, cached $0.144375. Grounding is separately $0.03/request. Complete native offer published October 16, 2026; these token meters take effect October 1 and bill per 1K tokens, converted here to per million. Customization, provisioned capacity and account-specific routing remain separate.

DeepSeek R1: No current first-party API. The original deepseek-reasoner alias moved to R1-0528 on May 28, 2025 and V3.1 on August 21, 2025, before the alias retired July 24, 2026 at 15:59 UTC. Historical launch tariffs are not verified here; hosts charge their own rates for the MIT weights.

BalancedRecord checked October 25, 2026

Amazon Nova 2 Lite

Amazon’s hosted Nova 2 Lite reasoning model for everyday business workflows, with a 1M-token context window.

Best for

  • Document processing
  • Business automation
  • Bedrock integrations

Watch out

Extended thinking is optional and off by default. Low/medium/high controls apply when enabled; high forbids maxTokens, temperature and topP overrides. The model card advertises 64K output, but the high-thinking guide describes outputs exceeding 65K and sometimes reaching 128K, so no universal hard output cap is asserted. Reasoning tokens are billed as output. Use the route-specific US/EU/JP/global ID supported by your account; documents are inputs and text is generated.

BalancedOpen weightsRecord checked October 25, 2026

DeepSeek R1

DeepSeek R1 is the January 2025 open-weight (MIT) reasoning model — now open weights only, with no first-party API.

Best for

  • Harder reasoning on a budget
  • Open-weight deployments
  • Agentic coding

Watch out

Original January R1 MIT weights remain available. The first-party alias moved to R1-0528 on May 28, 2025 and later to other models before its July 24, 2026 retirement. Pin the exact checkpoint; no current first-party tariff, hard native output cap or selectable hosted effort menu is established for this original profile. Distilled Qwen/Llama variants have additional base-model licence terms.

When the cheaper one wins

One of these rows is missing a verified output price, so this page will not name a cheaper winner. Run the model picker against the actual job instead of guessing.

Run the model picker

Evidence confidence: Insufficient data

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better. Hard limitations apply: missing pricing; evidence too sparse.

  • Pricing incomplete — No verified token pricing for DeepSeek R1.
  • 2/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, parameter count, reasoning levels.
  • No directly aligned benchmark setup — No benchmark has matching cited sources, source dates, units, effort and recorded run details on both models.
  • Verified within the last 90 days — Older of the two catalog checks was 1 day ago.
  • Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Amazon Nova 2 Lite · DeepSeek R1

Common questions

Amazon Nova 2 Lite vs DeepSeek R1

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Which has the larger context window, Amazon Nova 2 Lite or DeepSeek R1?
Amazon Nova 2 Lite accepts 1M tokens against 128K for DeepSeek R1. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Should I use Amazon Nova 2 Lite or DeepSeek R1?
Both are classified in our balanced tier; this editorial grouping does not imply equal capability. Amazon Nova 2 Lite is a candidate for document processing; DeepSeek R1 is a candidate for harder reasoning on a budget. Compare accuracy, tool reliability, latency and cost on representative tasks.
Can I self-host Amazon Nova 2 Lite or DeepSeek R1?
DeepSeek R1 publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Amazon Nova 2 Lite is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

  • Context: Amazon Nova 2 Lite takes 1M against 128K for DeepSeek R1 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
  • Deployment: DeepSeek R1 publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
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