Perplexity · language model
Sonar: pricing, context and benchmarks
Sonar is Perplexity's model released on January 27, 2025. It costs $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens, with a 127.1K-token context window. No independent score has been published for it so far.
What you need to know about Sonar
Perplexity, based in United States, put Sonar online on January 27, 2025. It accepts text and images as input and produces text. Its context window reaches 127,072 tokens, larger than 12 % of the models in the registry, and it can write up to 114,364 tokens in one go.
Released more than 1 year ago, it belongs to a generation most vendors have since superseded.
Sonar pricing
On OpenRouter, Sonar costs $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens. Counting three tokens read for every token written, its average price is $1 per million, more expensive than 59 % of paid models (1.3 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 $0.0025. At 1,000 tasks a day, budget $75 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. 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.
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 Pro Search | Oct 30, 2025 | $6 | — |
| Sonar Reasoning Pro | Mar 7, 2025 | $3.5 | — |
| Sonar Pro | Mar 7, 2025 | $6 | — |
| Sonar Deep Research | Mar 7, 2025 | $3.5 | — |
Verdict
Computed score: 23/100, from public data (performance, price, context, features).
Limitations
- No tool calling: unusable as an agent's brain.
- No independent score published: performance cannot be verified.
- Older generation, often replaced by a newer model from the same vendor.
Avoid if…
- your data must not leave your servers;
- you are building an agent that must call tools.
Alternatives
Comparisons and tools
Learn more
Frequently asked questions
How much does Sonar cost?
$1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens on OpenRouter (checked October 25, 2026). A task with 2,000 tokens read and 500 written costs $0.0025.
How big is Sonar's context window?
127,072 tokens, roughly 95,000 words, with a maximum of 114,364 output tokens.
Can Sonar run locally?
No, Perplexity does not publish its weights: it is API-only.
Is Sonar suitable for an AI agent?
No: without tool calling it cannot act, only answer.
What are the alternatives to Sonar?
The closest models on price and performance are Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview), Aion-RP 1.0 (8B), and GPT Audio Mini.
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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