LLMversus

Phi-4 vs Sonar Reasoning: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

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

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare Phi-4 and Sonar Reasoning across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: September 14, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeaturePhi-4Sonar Reasoning
ProviderMicrosoftPerplexity
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.070$2.00
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.140$8.00
Context Window
16.384K
127K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
8,192
Arena ELO
1,150
1,240
Coding ELO
1,130
1,235
TTFT (ms)
100
150
Tokens/sec
160
100
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingNoYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use Phi-4

Phi-4 excels at cost-sensitive, edge-deployment, math, lightweight-tasks tasks.

Strengths:

  • Ultra-low cost for a capable model
  • Strong math for its size (14B params)
  • Very fast inference
  • Can run on consumer hardware

Best for:

cost-sensitiveedge-deploymentmathlightweight-tasks
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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