Phi-3.5 Mini vs Sonar Reasoning: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare Phi-3.5 Mini and Sonar Reasoning across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeaturePhi-3.5 MiniSonar Reasoning
ProviderMicrosoftPerplexity
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.130$1.00
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.520$5.00
Context Window
128K
127K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
8,192
Arena ELO
1,160
1,240
Coding ELO
1,165
1,235
TTFT (ms)
150
150
Tokens/sec
100
100
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use Phi-3.5 Mini

Phi-3.5 Mini excels at cost-effective, fast-inference tasks.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Fast
  • Large context

Best for:

cost-effectivefast-inference
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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