vs
1:2
overall capability wins (1 ties across 4 scored). Sonar Reasoning leads overall.
- Reasoning0:2
- Pricing2:0
- Speed1:1
- Specs1:0
Verdict
Sonar Reasoning edges reasoning & knowledge; Sonar offers larger context (127K vs 127K); Sonar is ~2.0x cheaper on a blended token basis than Sonar Reasoning.
- Sonar Reasoning edges reasoning & knowledge
- Sonar offers larger context (127K vs 127K)
- Sonar is ~2.0x cheaper on a blended token basis than Sonar Reasoning
Cost for 1M in + 250K out
Illustrative chat workload at primary-provider list prices.
- Sonar
- $1.25
- Sonar Reasoning
- $2.25
Sonar is about 1.8x cheaper on this workload.
Price per 1M tokens
Full comparison
Organization
Perplexity
Perplexity
Family
Sonar
Sonar
License
Proprietary
Proprietary
Open weights
No
No
Release
Jan 27, 2025
Jan 27, 2025
Knowledge cutoff
-
-
API / provider
Perplexity
Perplexity
Modalities
text, image → text
text → text
Specs
Context window
127K
127K
Max output
8K
8K
Parameters
—
—
Pricing
Input $/1M
$1
$1
Output $/1M
$1
$5
Blended $/1M (3∶1)
$1
$2
Speed
tok/s
122
60
TTFT (s)
2.3
1.5
Reasoning
MMLU-Pro
68.9
—
GPQA Diamond
47.1
62.3
Humanity's Last Exam
4.9
—
AIME 2025
—
—
MATH-500
81.7
92.1
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
29.5
—
Terminal-Bench 2.1
—
—
Aider Polyglot
—
—
Terminal-Bench 3
—
—
BigCodeBench
—
—
SciCode
22.9
—
CursorBench
—
—
SWE-Rebench
—
—
NL2Repo-Bench
—
—
DeepSWE
—
—
WebDev Arena
—
—
Terminal-Bench 4.0
—
—
CursorBench 4.0
—
—
FrontierCode v1.1 (Main)
—
—
Arena
LMArena Elo
—
—
| Metric | Sonar | Sonar Reasoning | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | |||
| Organization | Perplexity | Perplexity | — |
| Family | Sonar | Sonar | — |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary | — |
| Open weights | No | No | — |
| Release | Jan 27, 2025 | Jan 27, 2025 | — |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | - | — |
| API / provider | Perplexity | Perplexity | — |
| Modalities | text, image → text | text → text | — |
| Specs | |||
| Context window | 127K | 127K | A +72 |
| Max output | 8K | 8K | tie |
| Parameters | — | — | — |
| Pricing | |||
| Input $/1M | $1 | $1 | tie |
| Output $/1M | $1 | $5 | A +$4 |
| Blended $/1M (3∶1) | $1 | $2 | A +$1 |
| Speed | |||
| tok/s | 122 | 60 | A +62 |
| TTFT (s) | 2.3 | 1.5 | B +0.80 |
| Reasoning | |||
| MMLU-Pro | 68.9 | — | — |
| GPQA Diamond | 47.1 | 62.3 | B +15.2 pts |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 4.9 | — | — |
| AIME 2025 | — | — | — |
| MATH-500 | 81.7 | 92.1 | B +10.4 pts |
| 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 | 29.5 | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | — | — | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 3 | — | — | — |
| BigCodeBench | — | — | — |
| SciCode | 22.9 | — | — |
| CursorBench | — | — | — |
| SWE-Rebench | — | — | — |
| NL2Repo-Bench | — | — | — |
| DeepSWE | — | — | — |
| WebDev Arena | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| CursorBench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| FrontierCode v1.1 (Main) | — | — | — |
| Arena | |||
| LMArena Elo | — | — | — |
Sonar
- Context
- 127K / 8K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $1 / $1
- Speed
- 122 tok/s · 2.3s TTFT
- Modalities
- text, image → text
- License
- Proprietary
Perplexity's lightweight search-augmented model — real-time web grounding; token pricing excludes per-request search fees ($5–12/1K requests).
Sonar Reasoning
- Context
- 127K / 8K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $1 / $5
- Speed
- 60 tok/s · 1.5s TTFT
- Modalities
- text → text
- License
- Proprietary
Perplexity's grounded reasoning API with live web search — mid-tier before Sonar Reasoning Pro.
Benchmark charts
Winner bars are emphasized. Per-benchmark deltas sit above each chart.