Sonar Deep Research vs Nova Lite 1.0 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.
Sonar Deep Research — full profile › · Nova Lite 1.0 — full profile ›
Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai
Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.
| Spec | Sonar Deep Research | Nova Lite 1.0 | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | Perplexity | Amazon | – |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary | – |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 300K tokens | AMNova Lite 1.0 |
| Input price | $2/M | $0.06/M | AMNova Lite 1.0 |
| Output price | $8/M | $0.24/M | AMNova Lite 1.0 |
| Vision / multimodal | No | Yes | AMNova Lite 1.0 |
| Tool / function calling | No | Yes | AMNova Lite 1.0 |
| Self-hostable | No (API only) | No (API only) | – |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary | – |
Nova Lite 1.0 is ~33× cheaper than Sonar Deep Research on output tokens ($0.24 vs $8 per M tokens).
| Capability | Sonar Deep Research | Nova Lite 1.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✗ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| Runs fully offline | ✗ | ✗ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✗ | ✓ |
| Tool / function calling | ✗ | ✓ |
| 1M+ context window | ✗ | ✗ |
| Criterion | Sonar Deep Research | Nova Lite 1.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 3.5 | 5.0 |
| Context window | 3.5 | 4.0 |
| Openness | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| Self-hosting | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Multimodality | 2.0 | 5.0 |
Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.
Sonar Deep Research is a research-focused model designed for multi-step retrieval, synthesis, and reasoning across complex topics. It autonomously searches, reads, and evaluates sources, refining its approach as it gathers...
Amazon Nova Lite 1.0 is a very low-cost multimodal model from Amazon that focused on fast processing of image, video, and text inputs to generate text output. Amazon Nova Lite...
Nova Lite 1.0 is cheaper on output ($0.24/M vs $8/M).
Nova Lite 1.0 offers the larger context window (300K tokens).
Choose Nova Lite 1.0 for the lower output price ($0.24/M vs $8/M). It also gives you the larger 300K context window.
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