AI Models · Paid vs Paid

Sonar Pro Paid vs Solar Pro 3 Paid

Sonar Pro vs Solar Pro 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 ProPaidPerplexity
$3 /M input
$15 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window200K tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostNo
Solar Pro 3PaidUpstage
$0.15 /M input
$0.6 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window131K tokens
MultimodalNo
Self-hostNo
Choose Solar Pro 3 for the lower output price ($0.6/M vs $15/M). Choose Sonar Pro if you need the larger 200K context window.

Sonar Pro vs Solar Pro 3 specs

SpecSonar ProSolar Pro 3Winner
MakerPerplexityUpstage
TypeProprietaryProprietary
Context window200K tokens131K tokensSonar Pro
Input price$3/M$0.15/MSolar Pro 3
Output price$15/M$0.6/MSolar Pro 3
Vision / multimodalYesNoSonar Pro
Tool / function callingNoYesSolar Pro 3
Self-hostableNo (API only)No (API only)
LicenseProprietaryProprietary

Price gap & when to choose each

25×cheaper per output token

Solar Pro 3 is ~25× cheaper than Sonar Pro on output tokens ($0.6 vs $15 per M tokens).

Choose Sonar Pro 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 Solar Pro 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 ProSolar Pro 3
Open weights (downloadable)
Self-hostable
Runs fully offline
Vision / multimodal
Tool / function calling
1M+ context window

Benchmarks: Sonar Pro vs Solar Pro 3

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

Sonar Pro
Solar Pro 3
Intelligence index
7.6
7.8
GPQA
57.8%
72.4%
MMLU-Pro
75.5%
Humanity's Last Exam
6.6%
10.3%
LiveCodeBench
27.5%
MATH-500
74.5%
AIME
29%
Coding index
16.2
Long Context Reasoning
32.3%
SciCode
25.5%
IFBench
71.2%
τ²-Bench
86.3%
τ-Bench Banking
8.7%
Terminal-Bench
12%
Terminal-Bench Hard
7.6%
Speed
0 tok/s
157.2 tok/s
Latency
0s
1.33s
Intelligence per $
29.8

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How Sonar Pro and Solar Pro 3 score

🏆 Best value & openness: Solar Pro 3 (2.9 vs 2.6 / 5)
CriterionSonar ProSolar Pro 3
Cost-efficiency3.05.0
Context window4.03.5
Openness1.51.5
Self-hosting1.01.0
Multimodality3.53.5

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.

What each model is

Sonar Pro Paid

Perplexity · Proprietary

Note: Sonar Pro pricing includes Perplexity search pricing. See [details here](https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/pricing#detailed-pricing-breakdown-for-sonar-reasoning-pro-and-sonar-pro) For enterprises seeking more advanced capabilities, t

Solar Pro 3 Paid

Upstage · Proprietary

Solar Pro 3 is Upstage's powerful Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language model. With 102B total parameters and 12B active parameters per forward pass, it delivers exceptional performance while maintaining computational efficiency. Optimized...

Frequently asked questions

Sonar Pro vs Solar Pro 3 — which is cheaper?

Solar Pro 3 is cheaper on output ($0.6/M vs $15/M).

Which has the larger context window?

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

Sonar Pro vs Solar Pro 3 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose Solar Pro 3 for the lower output price ($0.6/M vs $15/M). Choose Sonar Pro if you need the larger 200K context window.

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