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Model comparison

Amazon Nova 2 Lite vs Kimi K2.6

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

Amazon Nova 2 Lite: profile checked October 25, 2026Kimi K2.6: profile checked October 25, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: Medium — see receipts below

Amazon

Amazon Nova 2 Lite

Balanced

vs

Moonshot AI

Kimi K2.6

Balanced · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationAmazon Nova 2 LiteKimi K2.6
ProviderAmazonMoonshot AI
TierBalancedBalanced
Context windowWinner: 1M262K
Max outputNot verifiedUnverifiedNot verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokensWinner: $0.30$0.95
Output / 1M tokensWinner: $2.50$4
WeightsClosedOpen
ParametersNot verifiedUnverified1T total / 32B active (MoE, 384 experts)
Reasoning levelslow, medium, highNot verifiedUnverified
Modalitiestext, image, videotext, image, video
LicenseNot verifiedUnverifiedModified MIT
API model idamazon.nova-2-lite-v1:0kimi-k2.6
ReleasedDecember 2, 2025April 20, 2026

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.

Kimi K2.6: Kimi API USD/MTok input/output $0.95/$4, cached input $0.16; taxes excluded. Context 262,144. No hard output cap is established by the guide; 98,304-token evaluations and 32K examples are not limits. Kimi Platform API announces no K2 access for newly registered users starting October 31, 2026; existing users are unaffected then. Retirement is planned by end-December, without an exact confirmed shutdown day. This notice does not establish Kimi Code membership routing.

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

Kimi K2.6

Moonshot's open-weight Kimi K2.6 multimodal MoE: 1T total/32B active parameters and a 262,144-token context, with separate official-API video support.

Best for

  • Open-weight multimodal work
  • Hosted agent workflows
  • Evaluating exact K2.6 weights

Watch out

Platform API supports thinking/non-thinking; temperature is fixed at 1.0 for thinking or 0.6 otherwise, top_p=0.95 and n=1. A complete named effort menu remains unverified. Modified MIT requires Kimi K2.6 UI attribution for commercial products above 100M monthly active users or US$20M monthly revenue. Video input and serving behavior belong to the named API route; self-hosted memory/throughput is not inferred.

When the cheaper one wins

Amazon Nova 2 Lite is cheaper on output at $2.50 per million tokens against $4 for Kimi K2.6 — about 1.6×. 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.

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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.
  • 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 · Kimi K2.6

Common questions

Amazon Nova 2 Lite vs Kimi K2.6

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

Is Amazon Nova 2 Lite or Kimi K2.6 cheaper for input?
Amazon Nova 2 Lite is cheaper at $0.30 per million input tokens, against $0.95 for Kimi K2.6 — roughly 3.2× 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 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. Kimi K2.6: Kimi API USD/MTok input/output $0.95/$4, cached input $0.16; taxes excluded. Context 262,144. No hard output cap is established by the guide; 98,304-token evaluations and 32K examples are not limits. Kimi Platform API announces no K2 access for newly registered users starting October 31, 2026; existing users are unaffected then. Retirement is planned by end-December, without an exact confirmed shutdown day. This notice does not establish Kimi Code membership routing.
Is Amazon Nova 2 Lite or Kimi K2.6 cheaper for output?
Amazon Nova 2 Lite is cheaper at $2.50 per million output tokens, against $4 for Kimi K2.6 — roughly 1.6× 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 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. Kimi K2.6: Kimi API USD/MTok input/output $0.95/$4, cached input $0.16; taxes excluded. Context 262,144. No hard output cap is established by the guide; 98,304-token evaluations and 32K examples are not limits. Kimi Platform API announces no K2 access for newly registered users starting October 31, 2026; existing users are unaffected then. Retirement is planned by end-December, without an exact confirmed shutdown day. This notice does not establish Kimi Code membership routing.
Which has the larger context window, Amazon Nova 2 Lite or Kimi K2.6?
Amazon Nova 2 Lite accepts 1M tokens against 262K for Kimi K2.6. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Should I use Amazon Nova 2 Lite or Kimi K2.6?
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; Kimi K2.6 is a candidate for open-weight multimodal work. Compare accuracy, tool reliability, latency and cost on representative tasks.
Can I self-host Amazon Nova 2 Lite or Kimi K2.6?
Kimi K2.6 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.

  • Input price: Amazon Nova 2 Lite costs $0.30 per 1M tokens versus $0.95 for Kimi K2.6 — a 3.2x difference at the headline tier.
  • Context: Amazon Nova 2 Lite takes 1M against 262K for Kimi K2.6 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
  • Deployment: Kimi K2.6 publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
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