Sonar
Unavailable in this round
Language modelActive
Sonar
Perplexity
- Released
- January 2025
- Data date
- September 8, 2026
- Price
- Input · Output / 1M tokens
Perplexity Sonar remains text-based and has no dedicated reasoning mode in the original Chat Completions call. That call has a 128K-token context. Compared with Sonar Pro, Sonar is aimed at lighter source-oriented queries rather than long autonomous planning.
The access situation has changed. Perplexity ended support for Sonar Chat Completions on September 27, 2026. According to the migration notice, synchronous and streaming requests are being reformulated through the Agent API, while asynchronous Sonar requests no longer work there.
Specifications and access
| Specification | Value and source |
|---|---|
| Weights | ProprietarySource |
| Access | APISource |
| Context window | 128,000 tokensSource |
| Notes | Perplexity additionally charges $5 (low), $8 (medium) or $12 (high context) per 1,000 requests; the Sonar Chat Completions API is replaced by the Agent API on September 27, 2026.Source |
| Release | 2025-01 (Month-only precision; source did not expose an exact day.)Source |
| API model ID | sonarSource |
| Reasoning mode | NoSource |
Measurements without matching peer values
These measurements have no matching peer values under the same test conditions. Their original values and sources remain available here.
SimpleQA F-score (Show measurement, test conditions, and source)
- Source value
- 77.3
- Score
- 77.3
- Metric
- percent
- Unit
- %
- Category
- factuality
- Direction
- Higher is better
- Source type
- vendor-reported
- Evaluator
- Perplexity official API resource
- Status
- active
- Retrieved at
- 2026-09-08
- Methodology
- Vendor-reported result. Perplexity Sonar API; SimpleQA factuality benchmark; January 2025 launch comparison
- Context
- Vendor announcement does not disclose the exact model snapshot, search mode, prompt set, or evaluator beyond the named SimpleQA F-score.
BrowseComp (Perplexity migration comparison) (Show measurement, test conditions, and source)
- Source value
- 7
- Score
- 7
- Metric
- accuracy
- Unit
- %
- Benchmark version
- Perplexity Sonar-to-Agent-API comparison, evaluation date not stated
- Category
- agentic
- Direction
- Higher is better
- Source type
- vendor-reported
- Evaluator
- Perplexity migration benchmarks
- Status
- active
- Retrieved at
- 2026-10-15
- Methodology
- Vendor-reported result. Publisher comparison of Sonar Chat Completions; api=sonar, label=Sonar. BrowseComp accuracy.
- Context
- Historical Sonar baseline, not an Agent API preset or a fresh endpoint test. Evaluation date, sample count and inference settings are not disclosed.
DeepSearchQA (Perplexity migration comparison) (Show measurement, test conditions, and source)
- Source value
- 27.26
- Score
- 27.26
- Metric
- F1
- Unit
- %
- Benchmark version
- Perplexity Sonar-to-Agent-API comparison, evaluation date not stated
- Category
- agentic
- Direction
- Higher is better
- Source type
- vendor-reported
- Evaluator
- Perplexity migration benchmarks
- Status
- active
- Retrieved at
- 2026-10-15
- Methodology
- Vendor-reported result. Publisher comparison of Sonar Chat Completions; api=sonar, label=Sonar. DeepSearchQA F1.
- Context
- Historical Sonar baseline, not an Agent API preset or a fresh endpoint test. Evaluation date, sample count and inference settings are not disclosed.
Our tests
SVG short test
One SVG prompt and fixed output settings. Captures are shown only with 0 reported reasoning tokens or documented lack of reasoning controls. Identical test conditions do not make the models' internal compute identical.
Earlier tests
Pelican on a bicycle
A community classic for free-form SVG drawing.
Sonar
Reasoning (requested): not specified
Current attempt
- Run date
- Oct 1, 2026
- API provider
- openrouter
- Requested API model
- perplexity/sonar
- API model reported in response
- perplexity/sonar
- Reasoning setting
- not specified
- Pinned endpoint
- Perplexity | perplexity/sonar
- Temperature
- Provider default
- Token limit including reasoning
- 8,192 tokens
- Test protocol
- community-visual-tests-v1
- Technical checks
- Passed, not a quality rating
- Response time
- 5.6 s
Visually reviewed. This individual test does not establish overall model quality.
Prompt and test conditions
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Token limit including reasoning: 8,192 tokens
Task origin (Simon Willison)Popularity
22.8 / 100
Sources and data date
| Type | Evidence and data date |
|---|---|
| Price | Base API prices without caching or batch discounts. Higher context tiers and other rates are listed under Costs. |
| Research status | Research date September 8, 2026. 7 source URLs checked. This documents the inspected sources, not an exhaustive inventory of every publication. |
| Not found in the inspected sources | parameters-billions Original wording No exact value located in the checked primary model card/API documentation. |
| Not found in the inspected sources | active-parameters-billions Original wording No exact value located in the checked primary model card/API documentation. |
| Not found in the inspected sources | knowledge-cutoff Original wording No exact value located in the checked primary model card/API documentation. |
| Unresolved | AA benchmark rows Original wording No exact Artificial Analysis model page located in the checked public sitemap. |
| Additional source | Perplexity official API resource (retrieved September 8, 2026) |
| Additional source | Perplexity migration benchmarks (retrieved October 15, 2026) |
| Additional source | Model metadata (retrieved September 8, 2026) |
| Additional source | Perplexity migration guide from Sonar to the Agent API · Editorial description reviewed October 2, 2026 |
| Additional source | OpenRouter: Popularity index (derived), CC BY 4.0 |
| Additional source | Vercel AI Gateway: Popularity index (derived), CC BY 4.0 |
| Additional source | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 |