AI Models · Paid vs Paid

Sonar Pro Search Paid vs Mistral Medium 3 Paid

Sonar Pro Search vs Mistral Medium 3 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.

Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai

Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.

Sonar Pro SearchPaidPerplexity
$3 /M input
$15 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window200K tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostNo
Mistral Medium 3PaidMistral AI
$0.4 /M input
$2 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window131K tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostNo
Choose Mistral Medium 3 for the lower output price ($2/M vs $15/M). Choose Sonar Pro Search if you need the larger 200K context window.

Sonar Pro Search vs Mistral Medium 3 specs

SpecSonar Pro SearchMistral Medium 3Winner
MakerPerplexityMistral AI
TypeProprietaryProprietary
Context window200K tokens131K tokensSonar Pro Search
Input price$3/M$0.4/MMistral Medium 3
Output price$15/M$2/MMistral Medium 3
Vision / multimodalYesYes= Tie
Tool / function callingNoYesMistral Medium 3
Self-hostableNo (API only)No (API only)
LicenseProprietaryProprietary

Price gap & when to choose each

7.5×cheaper per output token

Mistral Medium 3 is ~7.5× cheaper than Sonar Pro Search on output tokens ($2 vs $15 per M tokens).

Choose Sonar Pro Search if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You need the longer 200K context window
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure
Choose Mistral Medium 3 if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You want the lower output price
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure

Feature comparison

CapabilitySonar Pro SearchMistral Medium 3
Open weights (downloadable)
Self-hostable
Runs fully offline
Vision / multimodal
Tool / function calling
1M+ context window

Benchmarks: Sonar Pro Search vs Mistral Medium 3

Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).

Sonar Pro Search
Mistral Medium 3
Intelligence index
9
Math index
30.3
GPQA
57.8%
MMLU-Pro
76%
Humanity's Last Exam
4.1%
Long Context Reasoning
31.3%
LiveCodeBench
40%
MATH-500
90.7%
AIME
44%
AIME 2025
30.3%
IFBench
39.3%
τ²-Bench
24.3%
Terminal-Bench Hard
3.8%
Speed
0 tok/s
Latency
0s
Intelligence per $
11.3

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How Sonar Pro Search and Mistral Medium 3 score

🏆 Best value & openness: Mistral Medium 3 (3.1 vs 2.6 / 5)
CriterionSonar Pro SearchMistral Medium 3
Cost-efficiency3.04.5
Context window4.03.5
Openness1.51.5
Self-hosting1.01.0
Multimodality3.55.0

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.

What each model is

Sonar Pro Search Paid

Perplexity · Proprietary

Exclusively available on the OpenRouter API, Sonar Pro's new Pro Search mode is Perplexity's most advanced agentic search system. It is designed for deeper reasoning and analysis. Pricing is based...

Mistral Medium 3 Paid

Mistral AI · Proprietary

Mistral Medium 3 is a high-performance enterprise-grade language model designed to deliver frontier-level capabilities at significantly reduced operational cost. It balances state-of-the-art reasoning and multimodal performance with 8× lowe

Frequently asked questions

Sonar Pro Search vs Mistral Medium 3 — which is cheaper?

Mistral Medium 3 is cheaper on output ($2/M vs $15/M).

Which has the larger context window?

Sonar Pro Search offers the larger context window (200K tokens).

Sonar Pro Search vs Mistral Medium 3 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose Mistral Medium 3 for the lower output price ($2/M vs $15/M). Choose Sonar Pro Search if you need the larger 200K context window.

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