LLMversus

o4-mini vs Sonar: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

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

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare o4-mini and Sonar across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: September 14, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

Featureo4-miniSonar
ProviderOpenAIPerplexity
Input Price / 1M tokens$1.10$1.00
Output Price / 1M tokens$4.40$1.00
Context Window
128K
127K
Max Output Tokens
32,768
4,096
Arena ELO
1,260
1,160
Coding ELO
1,270
1,170
TTFT (ms)
180
150
Tokens/sec
105
100
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use o4-mini

o4-mini excels at general-purpose, reasoning, coding tasks.

Strengths:

  • Affordable
  • Fast
  • Good reasoning

Best for:

general-purposereasoningcoding
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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