There’s little difference, as these two citations from the OED, both from the 1980s, show:

She and Roy would nibble on each other.

Encircling her slim waist with a fond arm, the husband of a fortnight nibbles her throat.

Neither describes an act of cannibalism.


Without the preposition is more common, but with the preposition is gaining in popularity.A graph showing the frequency of *nibble a* vs *nibble on a* in the Google books corpus