Sonar Pro Search vs Nova 2 Lite compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.
Sonar Pro Search — full profile › · Nova 2 Lite — 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 Pro Search | Nova 2 Lite | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | Perplexity | Amazon | – |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary | – |
| Context window | 200K tokens | 1M tokens | AMNova 2 Lite |
| Input price | $3/M | $0.3/M | AMNova 2 Lite |
| Output price | $15/M | $2.5/M | AMNova 2 Lite |
| Vision / multimodal | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| Tool / function calling | No | Yes | AMNova 2 Lite |
| Self-hostable | No (API only) | No (API only) | – |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary | – |
Nova 2 Lite is ~6.0× cheaper than Sonar Pro Search on output tokens ($2.5 vs $15 per M tokens).
| Capability | Sonar Pro Search | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✗ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| Runs fully offline | ✗ | ✗ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tool / function calling | ✗ | ✓ |
| 1M+ context window | ✗ | ✓ |
| Criterion | Sonar Pro Search | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 3.0 | 4.5 |
| Context window | 4.0 | 5.0 |
| Openness | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| Self-hosting | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Multimodality | 3.5 | 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.
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...
Nova 2 Lite is a fast, cost-effective reasoning model for everyday workloads that can process text, images, and videos to generate text. Nova 2 Lite demonstrates standout capabilities in processing...
Nova 2 Lite is cheaper on output ($2.5/M vs $15/M).
Nova 2 Lite offers the larger context window (1M tokens).
Choose Nova 2 Lite for the lower output price ($2.5/M vs $15/M). It also gives you the larger 1M context window.
Browse the full open-source model leaderboard, thousands of tools and live benchmarks — all in one place.
Open the leaderboard →