vs
2:0
overall capability wins (0 ties across 2 scored). Sonar Pro leads overall.
- Pricing0:3
- Speed0:2
- Specs2:0
Verdict
Sonar Pro offers ~16.7x larger context (200K vs 12K); Sonar Pro allows ~2.0x more max output (8K vs 4K); Sonar Small is ~30.0x cheaper on a blended token basis than Sonar Pro.
- Sonar Pro offers ~16.7x larger context (200K vs 12K)
- Sonar Pro allows ~2.0x more max output (8K vs 4K)
- Sonar Small is ~30.0x cheaper on a blended token basis than Sonar Pro
Cost for 1M in + 250K out
Illustrative chat workload at primary-provider list prices.
- Sonar Pro
- $6.75
- Sonar Small
- $0.25
Sonar Small is about 27.0x cheaper on this workload.
Price per 1M tokens
Full comparison
Organization
Perplexity
Perplexity
Family
Sonar
Sonar
License
Proprietary
Proprietary
Open weights
No
No
Release
Feb 19, 2025
Mar 14, 2024
Knowledge cutoff
-
-
API / provider
Perplexity
Perplexity
Modalities
text, image → text
text → text
Specs
Context window
200K
12K
Max output
8K
4K
Parameters
—
—
Pricing
Input $/1M
$3
$0.20
Output $/1M
$15
$0.20
Blended $/1M (3∶1)
$6
$0.20
Speed
tok/s
81
90
TTFT (s)
2.1
1.5
Reasoning
MMLU-Pro
75.5
—
GPQA Diamond
57.8
—
Humanity's Last Exam
6.6
—
AIME 2025
—
—
MATH-500
74.5
—
Humanity's Last Exam (with tools)
—
—
AA-Omniscience Accuracy
—
—
AA-LCR v1.1
—
—
CritPt
—
—
MMMU-Pro
—
—
IFBench
—
—
Chartography
—
—
Chartography (With Tools)
—
—
Coding
SWE-bench Verified
—
—
SWE-bench Pro
—
—
SWE-bench Multilingual
—
—
LiveCodeBench
27.5
—
Terminal-Bench 2.1
—
—
Aider Polyglot
—
—
Terminal-Bench 3
—
—
BigCodeBench
—
—
SciCode
22.6
—
CursorBench
—
—
SWE-Rebench
—
—
NL2Repo-Bench
—
—
DeepSWE
—
—
WebDev Arena
—
—
Terminal-Bench 4.0
—
—
CursorBench 4.0
—
—
FrontierCode v1.1 (Main)
—
—
Arena
LMArena Elo
—
—
| Metric | Sonar Pro | Sonar Small | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | |||
| Organization | Perplexity | Perplexity | — |
| Family | Sonar | Sonar | — |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary | — |
| Open weights | No | No | — |
| Release | Feb 19, 2025 | Mar 14, 2024 | — |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | - | — |
| API / provider | Perplexity | Perplexity | — |
| Modalities | text, image → text | text → text | — |
| Specs | |||
| Context window | 200K | 12K | A +188K |
| Max output | 8K | 4K | A +4K |
| Parameters | — | — | — |
| Pricing | |||
| Input $/1M | $3 | $0.20 | B +$2.80 |
| Output $/1M | $15 | $0.20 | B +$14.80 |
| Blended $/1M (3∶1) | $6 | $0.20 | B +$5.80 |
| Speed | |||
| tok/s | 81 | 90 | B +9.00 |
| TTFT (s) | 2.1 | 1.5 | B +0.60 |
| Reasoning | |||
| MMLU-Pro | 75.5 | — | — |
| GPQA Diamond | 57.8 | — | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 6.6 | — | — |
| AIME 2025 | — | — | — |
| MATH-500 | 74.5 | — | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam (with tools) | — | — | — |
| AA-Omniscience Accuracy | — | — | — |
| AA-LCR v1.1 | — | — | — |
| CritPt | — | — | — |
| MMMU-Pro | — | — | — |
| IFBench | — | — | — |
| Chartography | — | — | — |
| Chartography (With Tools) | — | — | — |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified | — | — | — |
| SWE-bench Pro | — | — | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | — | — | — |
| LiveCodeBench | 27.5 | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | — | — | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 3 | — | — | — |
| BigCodeBench | — | — | — |
| SciCode | 22.6 | — | — |
| CursorBench | — | — | — |
| SWE-Rebench | — | — | — |
| NL2Repo-Bench | — | — | — |
| DeepSWE | — | — | — |
| WebDev Arena | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| CursorBench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| FrontierCode v1.1 (Main) | — | — | — |
| Arena | |||
| LMArena Elo | — | — | — |
Sonar Pro
- Context
- 200K / 8K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $3 / $15
- Speed
- 81 tok/s · 2.1s TTFT
- Modalities
- text, image → text
- License
- Proprietary
Deeper Perplexity search model with ~2× citations versus base Sonar — suited to multi-step research agents (plus search surcharges).
Sonar Small
- Context
- 12K / 4K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $0.20 / $0.20
- Speed
- 90 tok/s · 1.5s TTFT
- Modalities
- text → text
- License
- Proprietary
Early Perplexity online SKU (sonar-small-online) — lightweight search-grounded chat before the current Sonar family.
Benchmark charts
Winner bars are emphasized. Per-benchmark deltas sit above each chart.
These two models have no overlapping published benchmarks in our dataset. Compare specs and pricing instead.