LLMversus

o3 vs Sonar: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

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

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare o3 and Sonar across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: September 14, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

Featureo3Sonar
ProviderOpenAIPerplexity
Input Price / 1M tokens$2.00$1.00
Output Price / 1M tokens$8.00$1.00
Context Window
200K
127K
Max Output Tokens
100,000
4,096
Arena ELO
1,340
1,160
Coding ELO
1,320
1,170
TTFT (ms)
600
150
Tokens/sec
15
100
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use o3

o3 excels at reasoning, coding, math tasks.

Strengths:

  • Highest reasoning capability
  • Best math performance
  • Code execution

Best for:

reasoningcodingmath
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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