--- title: Amazon Nova description: Amazon Nova is the family of foundation models built by AWS — Nova 2 Lite and Sonic plus Nova 1 Micro, Lite, Pro, Premier, Canvas, and Reel — available exclusively on Amazon Bedrock. url: https://www.joinhorizon.co/glossary/amazon-nova/ publishDate: 2026-10-08 updateDate: 2026-10-08 --- # Amazon Nova > Amazon Nova is the family of foundation models built by AWS — Nova 2 Lite and Sonic plus Nova 1 Micro, Lite, Pro, Premier, Canvas, and Reel — available exclusively on Amazon Bedrock. ## Definition Amazon Nova is AWS's first-party foundation model family, available exclusively through Amazon Bedrock. The **current everyday Nova** is **Nova 2 Lite** (GA December 2, 2025): multimodal text, image, and video with a **1M-token** context window (`amazon.nova-2-lite-v1:0`). **Nova 2 Sonic** covers speech. **Nova 2 Pro** is preview — do not treat it as general GA. Prior-generation text and multimodal models remain on the catalog: **Nova Micro** (lowest latency and published cost), **Nova Lite**, **Nova Pro**, and **Nova Premier**. **Nova Canvas** generates and edits images; **Nova Reel** generates short-form video — see [Nova Canvas and Reel guide](https://www.joinhorizon.co/blog/amazon-nova-canvas-reel-multimodal/). Nova is positioned for high-volume workloads where frontier-model reasoning from Claude Sonnet 5 or Opus 5 is unnecessary — classification, routing, OCR-heavy extraction, and cost-sensitive multi-tenant features. ## When to use it - **Everyday multimodal at volume** — customer support, document processing, and business automation on **Nova 2 Lite**. - **Cheapest text-only routing** — intent classification and pre-screens on **Nova Micro** when the 1M window is unused. - **Document and media understanding at scale** — PDFs, slides, charts, and short video (Nova 2 Lite or prior Nova Lite). - **Cost-sensitive SaaS features** where unit economics require a lower per-token model than Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Haiku 5.5 (Haiku 4.5 remains the prior pin; benchmark Nova 2 Lite vs Nova Pro / Premier). - **Image generation and editing** in AWS-native workflows without third-party image APIs (Nova Canvas). - **Short marketing or training clips** where Nova Reel's clip length fits the use case. - **Speech in/out** — Nova 2 Sonic, not Nova 2 Lite. ## When not to use it - **Long-horizon agentic workflows with heavy tool use** — Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Opus 5.5 remain safer defaults until you validate Nova on your tool-calling traces. Fable 5.1 is a Covered Model path, not a Nova substitute. - **Assuming Nova 2 Pro is GA** — it is preview; do not pin production on preview access. - **Customer fine-tuning of proprietary weights** — Nova does not offer the same open-weight fine-tuning path as Llama on Bedrock; use customization features only where documented for Nova. - **Long-form video production** — Nova Reel targets short clips; multi-minute video needs external pipelines or other services. ## Tips - Benchmark **Nova 2 Lite vs Nova Micro** on a representative sample before defaulting to 2 Lite for text-only routing — you still pay for unused context. - Pair Nova with **Bedrock Guardrails** and **Prompt Caching** for repeated system prompts in multi-tenant apps. - Use **Nova Premier** only after Sonnet 5.5 / Haiku 5.5 (Haiku 4.5 remains the prior pin) / Nova 2 Lite comparisons on your eval set. - For Canvas and Reel, plan **content moderation and watermarking** requirements upfront — Nova includes provenance features AWS documents for generated media. - Log model ID and token usage per tenant for **chargeback and abuse detection**. - Verify Nova 2 list rates on [Bedrock pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/pricing/) — do not copy unpublished $/MTok from blogs. ## Gotchas ### Serious - **Assuming Nova Pro or Nova 2 Lite matches Opus 5 on complex reasoning** — run task-specific evals; legal, medical, and multi-hop analysis often still favor Claude. - **Feeding unredacted PHI into the wrong environment** — Nova follows Bedrock data handling; your compliance boundary still requires BAA, logging, and access controls. ### Regular - **Using Premier for routing** — a wide cost spread between Micro and Premier means mis-tiered defaults burn budget silently. - **Nova Reel for long narratives** — plan multi-clip generation and stitching; single-prompt long video is not the model's design center. - **Ignoring regional model availability** — Nova model IDs differ by region; hardcode in config with region checks. ## Official references - [What is Amazon Nova?](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/nova/latest/userguide/what-is-nova.html) - [Nova 2 Lite model card](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/model-card-amazon-nova-2-lite.html) - [Supported models in Amazon Bedrock](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/models-supported.html) - [Inference parameters for Nova models](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/nova/latest/userguide/inference-parameters.html) - [Amazon Nova Canvas](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/nova/latest/userguide/modalities-image.html) ## Related FactualMinds content - [Amazon Bedrock Consulting](https://www.joinhorizon.co/services/aws-bedrock/) - [Generative AI on AWS](https://www.joinhorizon.co/services/generative-ai-on-aws/) - [Amazon Bedrock](https://www.joinhorizon.co/glossary/amazon-bedrock/) ## Related AWS Services - aws-bedrock - generative-ai-on-aws ## Related Posts - aws-bedrock-nova-models-guide --- *Source: https://www.joinhorizon.co/glossary/amazon-nova/*