Sonar Pro Search vs Perceptron Mk1 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.
Sonar Pro Search — full profile › · Perceptron Mk1 — 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 | Perceptron Mk1 | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | Perplexity | Perceptron | – |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary | – |
| Context window | 200K tokens | 33K tokens | |
| Input price | $3/M | $0.15/M | PEPerceptron Mk1 |
| Output price | $15/M | $1.5/M | PEPerceptron Mk1 |
| Vision / multimodal | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| Tool / function calling | No | No | – |
| Self-hostable | No (API only) | No (API only) | – |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary | – |
Perceptron Mk1 is ~10× cheaper than Sonar Pro Search on output tokens ($1.5 vs $15 per M tokens).
| Capability | Sonar Pro Search | Perceptron Mk1 |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✗ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| Runs fully offline | ✗ | ✗ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tool / function calling | ✗ | ✗ |
| 1M+ context window | ✗ | ✗ |
| Criterion | Sonar Pro Search | Perceptron Mk1 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 3.0 | 4.5 |
| Context window | 4.0 | 2.5 |
| Openness | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| Self-hosting | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Multimodality | 3.5 | 3.5 |
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...
Perceptron Mk1 (Mark One) is Perceptron's highest-quality vision-language model for video and embodied reasoning.** It accepts image and video inputs paired with natural language queries, and produces detailed visual understanding...
Perceptron Mk1 is cheaper on output ($1.5/M vs $15/M).
Sonar Pro Search offers the larger context window (200K tokens).
Choose Perceptron Mk1 for the lower output price ($1.5/M vs $15/M). Choose Sonar Pro Search if you need the larger 200K context window.
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