The closest alternative to Nova 2 Lite is Qwen3 VL 32B Instruct — comparable intelligence (24.7 vs 24.6); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M2.7 runs $0.250/M vs $0.300/M; for more speed, Mercury 2 hits 590 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Qwen3 VL 32B Instruct is the closest alternative to Nova 2 Lite, with an Intelligence Index of 24.7 (Nova 2 Lite scores 24.6) at $0.104 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiniMax M2.7 costs $0.250 per million input tokens versus $0.300 for Nova 2 Lite, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Nova 2 Lite — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.