The closest alternative to Nova Micro 1.0 is Gemma 3 27B — comparable intelligence (10.3 vs 10.3); for a cheaper option, Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) runs Free/M vs $0.035/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 554 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Gemma 3 27B is the closest alternative to Nova Micro 1.0, with an Intelligence Index of 10.3 (Nova Micro 1.0 scores 10.3) at $0.080 per million input tokens.
Yes — Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) costs Free per million input tokens versus $0.035 for Nova Micro 1.0, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Nova Micro 1.0 — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.