Sonar pricing, context and benchmark
Sonar is lightweight, affordable, fast, and simple to use — now featuring citations and the ability to customize sources.
Everything that matters, in one table
Context, pricing, cache, modalities and tooling, from the model registry and Artificial Analysis.
| Model | Sonar |
| Model ID | perplexity/sonar |
| Provider | Perplexity |
| Release date | 27 January 2025 |
| Status | Generally available |
| Input context | 127,072 tokens |
| Output context | 114,364 tokens |
| Official input pricing | $1 per 1M tokens |
| Official output pricing | $1 per 1M tokens |
| Cache read pricing | Not published |
| Market input pricing | $1 per 1M (cheapest route) |
| Market output pricing | $1 per 1M (cheapest route) |
| Input modalities | text · image |
| Output modalities | text |
| Reasoning control | Not exposed |
| Tool support | Text generation only |
| Tokenizer | Other |
| Provider routes | 1 endpoint |
| Artificial Analysis index | Not published |
| Speed | Not published |
| Knowledge cutoff | Not publicly stated |
Input and output support
| Modality | Input | Output | Billed at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text | ✓ yes | ✓ yes | $1 in |
| Image | ✓ yes | no | $1 in |
| Audio | no | no | not supported |
| Video | no | no | not supported |
| File (PDF) | no | no | not supported |
What is Sonar?
Sonar is lightweight, affordable, fast, and simple to use — now featuring citations and the ability to customize sources.
It is designed for companies seeking to integrate lightweight question-and-answer features...
Sonar carries a 127K token window, uses the Other tokenizer and is served by Perplexity. On Hoodgen it sits in the General tier of the model menu next to its siblings, so you can switch mid conversation without losing the thread.
Release and what changed from the previous version
This is the only release of Sonar on OpenRouter, released 27 January 2025. The provider has not published a knowledge cutoff, so treat training data as recent but unconfirmed for very new events.
Features and capabilities
What can you do with Sonar?
Sonar pricing
Official pricing
- 127K context
- text, image input
- 1 route on OpenRouter
- What Hoodgen routes to first
- Same model, lower bill
Market pricing, every route
| Provider | Tier | Input | Output | Cache read | Uptime 24h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | standard | $1 | $1 | n/a | 100.0% |
API pricing and cost calculator
| Rate | Per call | Total | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest route | $0.0215 | $10.75 | 10213 |
| List price | $0.0215 | $10.75 | 10213 |
API and developer information
| Model ID | perplexity/sonar |
| Endpoint | https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions |
| Parameters | frequency_penalty · max_tokens · presence_penalty · temperature · top_k · top_p · web_search_options |
| Streaming | Yes, server sent events |
| Modality string | text+image->text |
| Max prompt tokens | 127,072 |
| Max completion tokens | 114,364 |
curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "perplexity/sonar",
"messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Summarise this document." }],
"max_tokens": 1024
}'Model limitations
| Text only output | It cannot generate images, audio or video. Pair it with an image model on Hoodgen when you need visuals. |
| Output cap | 114,364 tokens per request. Long deliverables have to be chunked. |
| Benchmarks not published | Artificial Analysis does not publish an Intelligence Index for this release, so no benchmark score is claimed here. |
| Knowledge cutoff | The provider does not state a fixed cutoff for every release. Verify very recent events against search. |
Sonar vs other Perplexity models
| Model | Context | Input /1M | Output /1M | AA index | Released |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sonar | 127K | $1 | $1 | n/a | 2025 |
| Sonar Pro | 200K | $3 | $15 | n/a | 2025 |
| Sonar Deep Research | 128K | $2 | $8 | n/a | 2025 |
Privacy and data policy
- On Hoodgen, prompts and attachments answer that request and stay in your conversation history so you can reopen it. They are not used to train models.
- Requests route through OpenRouter to Perplexity and are covered by that provider's API terms.
- Do not paste secrets or personal data you would not send to any hosted model.
Sonar questions, answered
Start chatting with Sonar
Free to try on Hoodgen AI, with a live credit estimate before every send. No API key, no setup.