LLMversus

GPT-3.5 Turbo vs Sonar: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Sep 14, 2026By LLMversusUpdated September 17, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare GPT-3.5 Turbo and Sonar across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: September 14, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-3.5 TurboSonar
ProviderOpenAIPerplexity
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.500$1.00
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.50$1.00
Context Window
16K
127K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
4,096
Arena ELO
1,120
1,160
Coding ELO
1,100
1,170
TTFT (ms)
150
150
Tokens/sec
100
100
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use GPT-3.5 Turbo

GPT-3.5 Turbo excels at cost-effective, general-purpose tasks.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Fast
  • Widely used

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose
When to Use Sonar

Sonar excels at web-search, cost-effective tasks.

Strengths:

  • Web search built-in
  • Affordable
  • Good quality

Best for:

web-searchcost-effective

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