Grok 3-mini vs Sonar Reasoning: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare Grok 3-mini and Sonar Reasoning across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGrok 3-miniSonar Reasoning
ProviderxAIPerplexity
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.200$1.00
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.800$5.00
Context Window
128K
127K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
8,192
Arena ELO
1,175
1,240
Coding ELO
1,190
1,235
TTFT (ms)
130
150
Tokens/sec
140
100
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use Grok 3-mini

Grok 3-mini excels at cost-effective, general-purpose tasks.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Fast
  • Large context

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose
When to Use Sonar Reasoning

Sonar Reasoning excels at reasoning, web-search tasks.

Strengths:

  • Reasoning + search
  • Fresh data
  • Good accuracy

Best for:

reasoningweb-search

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