Perplexity · language model
Sonar Pro Search: pricing, context and benchmarks
Sonar Pro Search is a language model from Perplexity released on October 30, 2025. It costs $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, with a 200K-token context window. No independent score has been published for it so far.
What you need to know about Sonar Pro Search
Sonar Pro Search was released by Perplexity (United States) on October 30, 2025. It accepts text and images as input and produces text. Its context window reaches 200,000 tokens, larger than 36 % of the models in the registry, and it can write up to 8,000 tokens in one go.
It has been available for about 12 months, long enough for its prices and scores to have settled.
Sonar Pro Search pricing
On OpenRouter, Sonar Pro Search costs $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens. Counting three tokens read for every token written, its average price is $6 per million, more expensive than 91 % of paid models (7.9 times the median of $0.76).
A concrete example: a task that sends 2,000 tokens (about 1,500 words) and receives a 500-token answer costs $0.0135. At 1,000 tasks a day, budget $405 a month. The price calculator redoes this with your own volumes.
Performance and benchmarks
Epoch AI does not yet publish a capabilities index for Sonar Pro Search. We therefore show no made-up performance rating: only price, context and features count towards its score.
Features, privacy and local use
- It does not support tool calling: it is not suited to driving an AI agent that has to act.
- It can answer in an enforced JSON format (structured outputs).
- It is a reasoning model: it "thinks" before answering, which helps on hard tasks but uses more output tokens.
Its weights are not published: it can only be used through the Perplexity API or a broker such as OpenRouter, which means sending your data off your machines.
Other Perplexity models
| Model | Released | Avg. price | ECI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sonar Reasoning Pro | Mar 7, 2025 | $3.5 | — |
| Sonar Pro | Mar 7, 2025 | $6 | — |
| Sonar Deep Research | Mar 7, 2025 | $3.5 | — |
| Sonar | Jan 27, 2025 | $1 | — |
Verdict
Sonar Pro Search scores 23/100 on our grid, which only uses published figures.
Limitations
- Expensive: costlier than 91 % of paid models.
- No tool calling: unusable as an agent's brain.
- No independent score published: performance cannot be verified.
Avoid if…
- you process large volumes on a tight budget;
- your data must not leave your servers;
- you are building an agent that must call tools;
- your tasks are mostly simple: a non-reasoning model will cost less.
Alternatives
- Claude Opus 4.5$10
- Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image)$4.5
- o3 Pro$35
- Claude Opus 4.1$30
- o1$26.25
- Command A$4.38
Comparisons and tools
Learn more
Frequently asked questions
How much does Sonar Pro Search cost?
$3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens on OpenRouter (checked October 25, 2026). A task with 2,000 tokens read and 500 written costs $0.0135.
How big is Sonar Pro Search's context window?
200,000 tokens, roughly 150,000 words, with a maximum of 8,000 output tokens.
Can Sonar Pro Search run locally?
No, Perplexity does not publish its weights: it is API-only.
Is Sonar Pro Search suitable for an AI agent?
No: without tool calling it cannot act, only answer.
What are the alternatives to Sonar Pro Search?
The closest models on price and performance are Claude Opus 4.5, Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image), and o3 Pro.
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Neutrality. No affiliate links. No vendor pays to be reviewed, rated or ranked. Reviews are directed by François Chollet, neutral and factual, and every data point is dated and sourced. How we score