Model comparison

Amazon Nova 2 Lite vs Grok 4.5

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

Recorded profile verification October 2, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: Medium — see receipts below

Amazon

Amazon Nova 2 Lite

Balanced

SpaceXAI

Grok 4.5

Balanced

AI model capability comparison
Specification	Amazon Nova 2 Lite	Grok 4.5
Provider
Provider	Amazon	SpaceXAI
Tier
Tier	Balanced	Balanced
Context window
Context window	Winner: 1M	500K
Max output
Max output	Not verifiedUnverified	Not verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens
Input / 1M tokens	Winner: $0.30	$2
Output / 1M tokens
Output / 1M tokens	Winner: $2.50	$6
Weights
Weights	Closed	Closed
Parameters
Parameters	Not verifiedUnverified	Not verifiedUnverified
Reasoning levels
Reasoning levels	low, medium, high	low, medium, high
Modalities
Modalities	text, image, video	text, image
API model id
API model id	amazon.nova-2-lite-v1:0	grok-4.5
Released
Released	December 2, 2025	July 8, 2026
Terminal-Bench 2.1 · source date Grok 4.5: 2026-07-16
Terminal-Bench 2.1 · source date Grok 4.5: 2026-07-16	Not verifiedUnverified	83.3
DeepSWE 1.1 · source date Grok 4.5: 2026-07-16
DeepSWE 1.1 · source date Grok 4.5: 2026-07-16	Not verifiedUnverified	53
DeepSWE 1.1 · source date Grok 4.5: 2026-07
DeepSWE 1.1 · source date Grok 4.5: 2026-07	Not verifiedUnverified	54

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.

Benchmark receipts

Where each score comes from, and how far it can be compared across models.

Source date2026-07-16
xAI — Introducing Grok 4.5 (vendor; Datacurve-run)
Agentic software engineering: pass@1 on real repo tasks with reported cost per completed task.
Directly comparable
Source date2026-07-16
xAI — Introducing Grok 4.5 (vendor)
Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment.
Comparable with caveatNot comparable with Terminal-Bench 3.0 or 4.0 (different task sets) or v1; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
Source date2026-07
Google DeepMind 3.6 Flash evaluation report (vendor-authored cross-model comparison; distinct observation from xAI's 53, with run comparability unverified)
Agentic software engineering: pass@1 on real repo tasks with reported cost per completed task.
Directly comparable

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. Global Flex/Batch $0.15/$1.25; Global Priority $0.525/$4.375, cached $0.13125. Grounding costs $0.03 per request separately. Snapshot: September 30, 2026 native offer file; regional routes, service tiers and customization have separate meters.

Grok 4.5: Standard $2/$6 per MTok below 200K prompt tokens; at 200K or more the full request bills $4/$12. Cached input $0.30 short or $0.60 long. US regional inference adds 10%. No separate text-output cap is verified.

BalancedRecord checked October 2, 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.

BalancedRecord checked October 1, 2026

Grok 4.5

Grok 4.5 is SpaceXAI's hosted reasoning model with a 500K-token context and configurable low, medium and high effort.

Best for

Real-time data queries
Technical tasks
Cost-sensitive reasoning

Watch out

An earlier API model, still listed in pricing; current docs recommend Grok 4.7. Context is 500K. xhigh requests map to high and reasoning cannot be disabled; presencePenalty, frequencyPenalty and stop are unsupported. Match the exact model, effort and dated benchmark configuration.

When the cheaper one wins

Amazon Nova 2 Lite is cheaper on output at $2.50 per million tokens against $6 for Grok 4.5 — about 2.4×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. This compares standard short-context token rates, not total cost per accepted task. Include input, cache, context tiers, schedules, retries and review in your pilot.

Run the model picker

Evidence confidence: Medium

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
3/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, parameter count.
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 25 days 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.

Amazon Nova 2 Lite: AWS dated Nova 2 Lite availability (accessed 2026-10-02)
Amazon Nova 2 Lite: AWS exact Lite card: Active, base ID, routes and rounded limits (accessed 2026-10-02)
Amazon Nova 2 Lite: AWS Lite thinking defaults and high-effort exceptions (accessed 2026-10-02)
Amazon Nova 2 Lite: AWS native Lite billing meters, September 30 offer (accessed 2026-10-02)
Amazon Nova 2 Lite: Amazon Lite text/image/video input and text output (accessed 2026-10-02)
Grok 4.5: Whole-profile primary source check October 1 (accessed 2026-10-01)
Grok 4.5: Whole-profile primary source check October 1 (accessed 2026-10-01)
Grok 4.5: SpaceXAI API release notes — Grok4.5 July8, EU availability July17 (accessed 2026-10-01)
Grok 4.5: SpaceXAI formal Grok4.5 announcement (July16; API release separately July8) (accessed 2026-08-29)
Grok 4.5: xAI pricing (grok-4.5 $2/$6, 500K) (accessed 2026-08-29)
Grok 4.5: SpaceXAI reasoning API (Grok 4.5 effort mapping) (accessed 2026-10-01)

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Amazon Nova 2 Lite · Grok 4.5

Common questions

Amazon Nova 2 Lite vs Grok 4.5

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

Is Amazon Nova 2 Lite or Grok 4.5 cheaper for input?

Amazon Nova 2 Lite is cheaper at $0.30 per million input tokens, against $2 for Grok 4.5 — roughly 6.7× the price. Estimate both input and output token volume for your workload. These are base rates; 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. Global Flex/Batch $0.15/$1.25; Global Priority $0.525/$4.375, cached $0.13125. Grounding costs $0.03 per request separately. Snapshot: September 30, 2026 native offer file; regional routes, service tiers and customization have separate meters. Grok 4.5: Standard $2/$6 per MTok below 200K prompt tokens; at 200K or more the full request bills $4/$12. Cached input $0.30 short or $0.60 long. US regional inference adds 10%. No separate text-output cap is verified.

Is Amazon Nova 2 Lite or Grok 4.5 cheaper for output?

Amazon Nova 2 Lite is cheaper at $2.50 per million output tokens, against $6 for Grok 4.5 — roughly 2.4× the price. Estimate both input and output token volume for your workload. These are base rates; 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. Global Flex/Batch $0.15/$1.25; Global Priority $0.525/$4.375, cached $0.13125. Grounding costs $0.03 per request separately. Snapshot: September 30, 2026 native offer file; regional routes, service tiers and customization have separate meters. Grok 4.5: Standard $2/$6 per MTok below 200K prompt tokens; at 200K or more the full request bills $4/$12. Cached input $0.30 short or $0.60 long. US regional inference adds 10%. No separate text-output cap is verified.

Which has the larger context window, Amazon Nova 2 Lite or Grok 4.5?

Amazon Nova 2 Lite accepts 1M tokens against 500K for Grok 4.5. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.

Do Amazon Nova 2 Lite and Grok 4.5 support the same reasoning levels?

Both expose these named effort settings: "low", "medium", "high". The same labels do not guarantee equal compute budgets or behavior across providers. Compare quality, latency and cost on your own tasks.

Should I use Amazon Nova 2 Lite or Grok 4.5?

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; Grok 4.5 is a candidate for real-time data queries. Compare accuracy, tool reliability, latency and cost on representative tasks.

Next step

Choosing between them

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

Input price: Amazon Nova 2 Lite costs $0.30 per 1M tokens versus $2 for Grok 4.5 — a 6.7x difference at the headline tier.
Context: Amazon Nova 2 Lite takes 1M against 500K for Grok 4.5 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.

Run the model picker Estimate stack cost All model comparisons

Choosing a harness rather than a model — Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Windsurf, or Lovable? Compare agentic harnesses · Latest releases.