Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Solar Mini | Nova Micro |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.15 | $0.04 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0.15 | $0.14 |
Verdict. Solar Mini wins the overall benchmark matchup 1–0 across 1 overlapping categories, but raw benchmark score is only one input to the decision.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.1× the per-million-token cost, Nova Micro is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Nova Micro makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Solar Mini is strongest on Intelligence Index (6.0). Nova Micro leads on Intelligence Index (4.4).
Speed. Speed data is incomplete for this pair; benchmark and price should decide.
Provider. Upstage and Amazon sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Upstage tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Amazon often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): Solar Mini costs $6.75 ($81/year); Nova Micro costs $3.30 ($40/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Solar Mini ≈ $1.05/run, Nova Micro ≈ $0.48/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Solar Mini ≈ $45/run, Nova Micro ≈ $22/run. Nova Micro becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Nova Micro is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.07/M tokens vs $0.15/M for Solar Mini.
Solar Mini wins 1 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for Nova Micro. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Nova Micro generates tokens faster at 282 tok/s vs — tok/s. However, Nova Micro has lower time-to-first-token (0.87s vs —s).
Choose based on your priorities: Nova Micro for lower cost, Solar Mini for stronger benchmark performance, and Nova Micro for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.