What is Amazon Nova?
Amazon Nova is the model line Amazon builds for its own cloud, sold per use on Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker AI. The current core is Nova 2 Lite, a reasoning model with a 1M-token context and built-in web search and code tools, plus Nova 2 Sonic for live voice, Nova Multimodal Embeddings for search, Nova Act for browser agents and Nova Forge for training your own model from Nova.
The lineup is shrinking. AWS lists Nova Premier, the first Nova Sonic, Nova Canvas and Nova Reel as legacy models it is retiring, and Nova 2 Pro and Nova 2 Omni are still previews open only to Nova Forge customers. Nova 2 Lite's knowledge stops at October 2025.
Is Amazon Nova still available?
Yes, but only part of the lineup: the Nova 2 models, the smaller first-generation models, Nova Act and Nova Forge are active, while four older models are legacy and being retired.
- Active
- Nova 2 Lite, Nova 2 Sonic, Nova Multimodal Embeddings, Nova Micro, Nova Lite and Nova Pro, plus the Nova Act and Nova Forge services.
- Legacy
- Nova Premier and the first Nova Sonic have reached their end-of-life date on Bedrock; Nova 2 Sonic is the newer voice model.
- Retiring
- Nova Canvas for images and Nova Reel for video are legacy, and AWS lists no Nova replacement for either on Bedrock.
- Preview only
- Nova 2 Pro and Nova 2 Omni are open only to Nova Forge customers, through their AWS account team.
Who is Amazon Nova best for?
Amazon Nova is best for teams already building on AWS that want low-cost models on Bedrock, voice assistants, agents that work through websites, or a custom model trained from Nova.
High-volume text jobs
Nova Micro costs $0.035 per million input tokens and batch jobs halve that, which suits classification, extraction and simple chat at scale.
Automating website tasks
Nova Act agents fill in web forms, run QA test journeys and pull data from sites that have no API, billed per agent hour.
Voice assistants
Nova 2 Sonic listens and speaks in one model, covers seven languages and can call tools mid-conversation.
Building a custom model
Fine-tuning on Bedrock and SageMaker AI, and the Nova Forge service, let a company train on top of Nova 2 Lite instead of starting from scratch.
What's included with Amazon Nova?
A reasoning model with thinking controls and built-in web and code tools, cheaper Flex and Batch tiers, prompt caching, fine-tuning, browser agents and adjustable content filters.
- Thinking controls
- Nova 2 Lite can reason step by step at low, medium or high effort, or answer straight away with thinking off.
- Built-in tools
- Web grounding with citations ($30 per 1,000 requests) and a Python code interpreter run inside the request, and remote MCP tools are supported.
- Price tiers
- Standard, Priority for faster answers at a premium, and Flex or Batch at half price for work that can wait.
- Prompt caching
- Cached input costs 75% less than regular input, for up to 20K cached tokens per prompt.
- Fine-tuning
- Supervised and reinforcement fine-tuning of Nova 2 Lite; a custom model costs the same per token as the base model, plus $1.95 a month to store.
- Nova Act agents
- Write agents in natural language and Python, test them in a playground or IDE extension, then deploy them on AWS with CloudWatch monitoring.
- Adjustable content filters
- Approved business uses such as security work or evidence review can relax some safety filters; child safety and privacy controls stay fixed.
How much does Amazon Nova cost?
Amazon Nova is pay-as-you-go on AWS with no subscription: Nova Micro costs $0.035 / $0.14 per million input / output tokens, Nova 2 Lite $0.30 / $2.50, and Nova Act agents $4.75 per agent hour.
- Text only, with a 128K-token context
- Batch jobs cost half: $0.0175 / $0.07
- Cached input $0.00875 per million tokens
- Reasoning model with a 1M-token context
- Flex and Batch tiers: $0.15 / $1.25
- Web grounding costs $30 per 1,000 requests
- Text tokens cost $0.33 / $2.75 per million
- Speech in and out in seven languages
- Billed only while an agent is working
- Agents running in parallel each bill separately
- Time spent waiting on a person is not billed
Nova 2 prices are for global cross-Region inference; keeping requests in one Region costs 10% more (Nova 2 Lite $0.33 / $2.75). Other models per million input / output tokens: Nova Lite $0.06 / $0.24, Nova Pro $0.80 / $3.20, and Nova 2 Pro (Preview) $1.25 / $10, open only to Nova Forge customers. Nova Multimodal Embeddings costs $0.135 per million text tokens. Cached input costs 75% less. Nova Forge is a yearly subscription priced only in its console. Nova Act API keys from nova.amazon.com are free with daily limits for prototyping, and new AWS customers get up to $200 in AWS credits. Prices are US dollars in US East (N. Virginia) and vary by Region. Full pricing on aws.amazon.com. We checked these prices on .
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Amazon Nova pros and cons
Nova is cheap, fast and easy to approve inside an AWS account, but developers rate it below the leading models, setup runs through AWS, and several models are being retired.
Pros
- Costs a fraction of the big-name models per token, and developers comparing it at launch found it fast as well as cheap.
- Easy to adopt for companies that already run on AWS: it bills through the existing account, so there is no new vendor to approve.
- In AWS's own launch table, Nova 2 Lite scored 76.0 on τ²-bench Telecom tool use, ahead of Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5 Mini and Gemini 2.5 Flash, and 83.3 on ScreenSpot screen reading.
- The low-cost Nova 2 Lite already has a 1M-token context and built-in web search and code tools.
Cons
- Developers on Hacker News and Reddit rate it below the leading models, and AWS's own table puts Nova 2 Lite behind Claude Haiku 4.5 on SWE-Bench Verified coding (64.5 against 73.3).
- Production use runs through AWS accounts, IAM and Bedrock, which several developers call slower to set up than a plain API key; the simpler nova.amazon.com keys stop at 500 requests a day for Nova 2 Lite.
- It is not the cheapest option: developers point to Gemini Flash models and open-weight models that cost less, and Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite lists $0.25 / $1.50 against Nova 2 Lite's $0.30 / $2.50.
What are the best Amazon Nova alternatives?
Three tools on Recaply do Amazon Nova's job. Skyvern is open source, so you can run it on your own server.
Gemini 3.1 Flash-LiteFreeChoose it when you do not need AWS: it has a free API tier, also takes audio, and costs $0.25 / $1.50 per million tokens against Nova 2 Lite's $0.30 / $2.50.
Claude Sonnet 5FreeChoose it when answer quality matters more than price: it also runs on Amazon Bedrock, with a 1M context and up to 128K tokens of output, at $2 / $10 per million tokens.
SkyvernOpen SourceChoose it when you want browser agents outside AWS: it is open source under AGPL-3.0 for self-hosting, and its cloud has a free plan and a $29-a-month tier instead of billing per agent hour.
Questions about Amazon Nova
What is Amazon Nova?
Amazon Nova is Amazon's own family of AI models and services for teams building on AWS: low-cost text and multimodal models, live voice, embeddings, browser agents and custom model training.
Who is Amazon Nova for?
Amazon Nova is best for teams already building on AWS that want low-cost models on Bedrock, voice assistants, agents that work through websites, or a custom model trained from Nova.
Is Amazon Nova free?
Not for production. Every Nova model and Nova Act is billed per use on AWS, and new AWS customers get up to $200 in AWS credits. You can chat with Nova models as a guest on nova.amazon.com, and Nova Act API keys from there are free with daily limits for prototyping.
Does Amazon Nova cost the same in every AWS Region?
No. Amazon Nova 2 models are cheapest with global cross-Region inference, and keeping requests in one Region adds about 10%. Prices also differ between Regions, so check the Region you plan to run in on the Nova pricing page.
Is there an open source alternative to Amazon Nova?
Yes. Skyvern is an open source tool that does the same job, so you can run your own.
What are the best Amazon Nova alternatives?
The closest alternatives on Recaply are Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, Claude Sonnet 5 and Skyvern.
Where can I try Amazon Nova?
On its official website, aws.amazon.com.
Can I use Amazon Nova without an AWS account?
Only for testing. Amazon's nova.amazon.com site has a chat app and an OpenAI-compatible API with simple API keys, but it caps Nova 2 Lite at 20 requests a minute and 500 a day and points to Amazon Bedrock for higher limits.
Amazon Nova 2 Lite vs Claude Haiku 4.5: which is better?
It depends on the job. In AWS's own launch table, Nova 2 Lite beats Claude Haiku 4.5 on AIME 2025 maths (91.0 against 80.7) and τ²-bench Telecom tool use (76.0 against 54.7), but trails it on SWE-Bench Verified coding (64.5 against 73.3). Test both on your own prompts.
Our verdict
Amazon Nova makes sense mainly for teams that already run on AWS and want cheap, fast models or browser agents on the same bill.
Nova Micro and Nova 2 Lite are among the lowest-priced models on Bedrock and Nova Act bills web agents by the hour, but developers rate the models below the leaders and AWS is retiring several of them.
- Skip it for
- Work that needs the strongest coding or reasoning model, and teams that do not already use AWS.
- Check first
- Check each model's lifecycle status on its Bedrock model card before you build on it.
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