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DBRX vs Sonar Large

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

DBRX specs · Sonar Large specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceSonar Large

    Sonar Large publishes pricing ($1.00 / 1M output tokens) while DBRX does not.

  • Context windowSonar Large

    Sonar Large accepts 127K tokens vs 32K, 4.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessDBRX

    DBRX ships open weights (Databricks Open Model License); Sonar Large is API-only.

On balance Sonar Large edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against DBRX's 1. Sonar Large publishes pricing ($1.00 / 1M output tokens) while DBRX does not. Sonar Large accepts 127K tokens vs 32K, 4.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. DBRX ships open weights (Databricks Open Model License); Sonar Large is API-only.

Sonar Large is the newer of the two, released 8 months after DBRX, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. DBRX is usually picked for enterprise llm and sql generation workloads, while Sonar Large sees more deployments in research agent and rag. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecDBRXSonar Large
ProviderOtherPerplexity
ReleasedMar 2024Nov 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window32K tokens127K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$1.00 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$1.00 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Databricks Open Model License)No
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day, vs $4.50
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $45.00
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $156

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • DBRXPricing unavailable
  • Sonar Large$0.150

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

DBRXSonar Large
  • MMLU73.7
Pick DBRX if

DBRX fits when…

  • Databricks-native
  • Tuned for enterprise SQL/code
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Databricks Open Model License).
Pick Sonar Large if

Sonar Large fits when…

  • Web-search grounded
  • Citation-first output
  • Cheap
  • Long-context tasks, handles 127K tokens vs 32K for DBRX.
Don't want either?

Consider Yi-Lightning

01.AI's API-tier Chinese-leaning model, strong on Chinese benchmarks at competitive pricing.

See Yi-Lightning specsDBRX vs Yi-LightningSonar Large vs Yi-Lightning

Frequently asked

  • Is DBRX or Sonar Large cheaper?
    Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Sonar Large accepts 127K tokens vs 32K for DBRX.
  • Is DBRX or Sonar Large better for coding?
    Both DBRX and Sonar Large are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    DBRX ships open weights (Databricks Open Model License). Sonar Large is API-only.
  • When were DBRX and Sonar Large released?
    DBRX was released by Other on 2024-03-27. Sonar Large was released by Perplexity on 2024-11-19.
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