Model index · Text · text generation · standard · Perplexity · released 2025-01-27
Sonar pricing
Served by 2 providers from $1.00 to $1.00 per 1M tokens on the standard tier.
Sonar is lightweight, affordable, fast, and simple to use — now featuring citations and the ability to customize sources. It is designed for companies seeking to integrate lightweight question-and-answer features...
Perplexity · first published 2025-01-27 · Text model · text generation · 127k context · description as published by the source, not written by us
$1.00
Cheapest standard /1M — Perplexity
127k
Native context window
2
Providers serving it
—
Quality not measured yet
Quality not measured yet
We measure models on request rather than pre-scoring the whole catalog, so this one has no score yet. Absence of a score is not a low score.
Every provider and service tier
Standard on-demand rows first, cheapest of each group first. Tiers are not interchangeable — see the note below the table.
| Provider | In /1M | Out /1M | Blended /1M | Tier | Region | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity cheapest standard | $1.00 | $1.00 | $1.00 | standard | — | third_party |
| OpenRouter (default route) * resells other hosts | $1.00 | $1.00 | $1.00 | standard | — | provider_api |
* OpenRouter chooses a host for each request, and the figure above is what its default choice costs — not a fixed rate for this model. Selecting a specific host through the same account costs whatever that host charges, which is why this row can sit above or below the hosts listed beside it. Token rates are passed through from the underlying provider with no markup, so the per-1M price above is what that host charges directly — OpenRouter's own charge sits on funding instead: 5.5% (min $0.80) by Stripe or 5% by Coinbase to buy credits, 5% of the equivalent spend if you bring your own provider key. So budget about 5% above the rate shown unless you already hold credit. Fee schedule.
Compare Sonar with alternatives
One model per vendor, ordered by how prominent the vendor is and how many independent providers serve the model — hosts only carry what customers ask for, so that is a real demand signal. This is not traffic or popularity data, which we do not have. Every alternative below does the same job — text generation — because a price comparison between a generator and, say, an upscaler is arithmetic rather than advice. Prices on both sides are standard on-demand rates, so the comparison is like for like — a discounted batch or flex rate is never shown against another model’s standard rate.
| Alternative | Vendor | $/1M | vs Sonar | Quality | Kind | Context | Hosts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 4 Maverick | Meta | $0.3240 OpenRouter (default route) | 68% cheaper | 80/100 | standard | 1.05M | 5 |
| Hermes 3 405B Instruct | Nous | $1.00 DeepInfra | 0% dearer | 60/100 | standard open weights | 131k | 3 |
| WizardLM-2 8x22B | Microsoft | $0.4800 DeepInfra | 52% cheaper | 100/100 | standard | 66k | 3 |
| Qwen2.5 VL 72B Instruct | Alibaba | $0.3750 OpenRouter (default route) | 63% cheaper | 20/100 | standard open weights | 128k | 2 |
| Mistral Medium 3.1 | Mistral | $0.8000 Mistral | 20% cheaper | not measured | standard | 131k | 1 |
| Kimi K2 0905 | MoonshotAI | $1.00 OpenRouter (default route) | 0% dearer | not measured | standard | 262k | 2 |
| Nova Pro 1.0 | Amazon | $1.40 OpenRouter (default route) | 40% dearer | not measured | standard | 300k | 2 |
| Command R (08-2024) | Cohere | $0.2625 Cohere | 74% cheaper | not measured | standard | 128k | 1 |
Prices are the cheapest host for each model, blended at a 3:1 input:output ratio. "Quality" is our own probe suite where we have run it — see what it measures. A cheaper alternative is only a real saving if it also passes on the capability your workload needs.
5 of these alternatives cost less than Sonar — the cheapest being Command R (08-2024) at $0.2625 per 1M tokens blended (74% cheaper).
Cheaper is not automatically better: check the quality column, and confirm the context window and capabilities your workload depends on before switching.
Before you switch
Identical weights do not guarantee identical output. Check that the cheaper host serves the model at full precision rather than a quantised copy, that its context window matches what you need, and that its rate limits carry your peak traffic. A cheaper host that cannot take your throughput is not cheaper — it is an outage.
Move to Perplexity without a rewrite
VernaOne fronts every provider on this page with one API, so switching host is a config change — with automatic fallback if quality or latency regresses.
Try VernaOne free →Frequently asked
How much does Sonar cost?
The cheapest standard-tier provider is Perplexity at $1.00 per 1M tokens blended (3:1 input:output). Prices change often; verify with the provider before budgeting.
Which provider is best for Sonar?
Cheapest is not automatically best. Compare quantisation (a lossy copy of the weights changes output), the context window each host actually serves, and rate limits. Where a provider serves less context than the model's native window we flag it in the table above.
Can I switch providers for Sonar without changing code?
Yes, if you route through an abstraction. VernaOne exposes one API across every provider listed here, so switching host is a config change and you keep automatic fallback if the new one degrades.
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