Amazon Nova: AWS's Native Foundation Models on Bedrock
Amazon Nova offers three tiers - Micro, Lite, and Pro - with up to 300k context on Nova Pro, multimodal input, and deep AWS ecosystem integration via Bedrock.
Mahmudul Haque Qudrati
CEO & ML Engineer
One AI engineering post, weekly
LLM benchmarks, prompt techniques, and token-cost breakdowns — not another AI news roundup.
Amazon Nova is Amazon's in-house family of foundation models, available exclusively through Amazon Bedrock. For teams already running workloads on AWS, Nova offers tight integration with IAM, VPC, CloudWatch, and S3 - without routing traffic through a third-party API.
The three-tier lineup covers different cost/capability tradeoffs:
| Model | Context | Best For | Price (Input) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nova Micro | 128k | Fast text tasks | $0.035/1M |
| Nova Lite | 300k | Multimodal, balanced | $0.060/1M |
| Nova Pro | 300k | Complex reasoning + multimodal | $0.800/1M |
Nova Micro is one of the cheapest commercially available LLMs at $0.035/1M input tokens.
Multimodal Input on Nova Lite and Pro
Nova Lite and Pro accept images, video clips, and documents alongside text:
import boto3
import json
import base64
bedrock = boto3.client("bedrock-runtime", region_name="us-east-1")
with open("diagram.png", "rb") as f:
image_data = base64.b64encode(f.read()).decode()
response = bedrock.invoke_model(
modelId="amazon.nova-pro-v1:0",
body=json.dumps({
"messages": [
{
"role": "user",
"content": [
{
"image": {
"format": "png",
"source": {"bytes": image_data}
}
},
{"text": "Describe the architecture shown in this diagram."}
]
}
],
"inferenceConfig": {"max_new_tokens": 1024}
})
)
result = json.loads(response["body"].read())
print(result["output"]["message"]["content"][0]["text"])
Team workspace
Ship faster with chat, meetings, and projects in one place — Zlyqor.
Bedrock Converse API
The Converse API provides a unified interface across all Bedrock models - Nova, Claude, Llama, Mistral, and others - with the same request/response format:
response = bedrock.converse(
modelId="amazon.nova-pro-v1:0",
messages=[
{"role": "user", "content": [{"text": "Summarize the key risks in this contract."}]}
],
inferenceConfig={"maxTokens": 2048, "temperature": 0.3}
)
print(response["output"]["message"]["content"][0]["text"])
Switching from Nova Pro to Claude Sonnet is a one-line change - modelId only.
RAG With Bedrock Knowledge Bases
For enterprise document Q&A, Bedrock Knowledge Bases manages the full RAG pipeline: S3 ingestion, chunking, embedding (via Titan Embeddings), OpenSearch Serverless vector store, and retrieval:
bedrock_agent = boto3.client("bedrock-agent-runtime")
response = bedrock_agent.retrieve_and_generate(
input={"text": "What are the termination clauses in our supplier agreements?"},
retrieveAndGenerateConfiguration={
"type": "KNOWLEDGE_BASE",
"knowledgeBaseConfiguration": {
"knowledgeBaseId": "your-kb-id",
"modelArn": "arn:aws:bedrock:us-east-1::foundation-model/amazon.nova-pro-v1:0"
}
}
)
print(response["output"]["text"])
Cost vs OpenAI on AWS
Running GPT-4o via Azure OpenAI on AWS adds egress costs and cross-cloud latency. Nova Pro at $0.80/1M input is cheaper than GPT-4o at $2.50/1M, with all traffic staying within the AWS network.
Summary
Amazon Nova is the pragmatic choice for AWS-native teams: competitive pricing, deep ecosystem integration, and a unified API across all Bedrock models. Explore the model lineup at aws.amazon.com/bedrock/nova and the full Bedrock documentation at docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock.
Mahmudul Haque Qudrati
CEO & ML Engineer
Visionary leader with extensive experience in machine learning and software development. Drives strategic innovation and business growth.
More from Mahmudul
Related Articles
DeepSeek vs MiniMax vs Kimi in Coding Benchmarks: Real Scores, Real Prices, Real Tradeoffs
DeepSeek V4 Pro, MiniMax M3, and Kimi K2.6 each lead different coding benchmarks. DeepSeek wins on cost and long-context, MiniMax claims top SWE-bench scores, and Kimi excels in agentic coding. Here's the data.
GPT-6 Astra Benchmarks, Pricing, and Safety: What Developers Need to Know
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra delivers state-of-the-art coding and agentic performance, but costs 50% more than GPT-4o. This guide covers benchmarks, pricing, safety, and practical advice for developers deciding whether to upgrade.
Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5.5 vs Gemini 3.1 Pro: June 2026 Benchmarks and Pricing
AA Index 61 vs 60 vs 57. SWE-Bench Pro, GDPval-AA, pricing tables, and where each model loses. Updated June 3, 2026 with primary source benchmarks.
// discussion
Comments