Is GPT-4o or Sonar Large cheaper?

Sonar Large is cheaper at $1.00 / 1M tokens per million output tokens, vs $10.00 / 1M tokens for GPT-4o.

Which has the larger context window?

GPT-4o accepts 128K tokens vs 127K for Sonar Large.

Is GPT-4o or Sonar Large better for coding?

Both GPT-4o 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?

Neither model ships open weights, both are accessible only via their respective providers' APIs.

When were GPT-4o and Sonar Large released?

GPT-4o was released by OpenAI on 2024-05-13. Sonar Large was released by Perplexity on 2024-11-19.

Is GPT-4o or Sonar Large cheaper?

Sonar Large is cheaper at $1.00 / 1M tokens per million output tokens, vs $10.00 / 1M tokens for GPT-4o.

Which has the larger context window?

GPT-4o accepts 128K tokens vs 127K for Sonar Large.

Is GPT-4o or Sonar Large better for coding?

Both GPT-4o 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?

Neither model ships open weights, both are accessible only via their respective providers' APIs.

When were GPT-4o and Sonar Large released?

GPT-4o was released by OpenAI on 2024-05-13. Sonar Large was released by Perplexity on 2024-11-19.

GPT-4o 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.

UpdatedApr 30, 2026

GPT-4o specs · Sonar Large specs

Verdict by category

PriceSonar Large
Sonar Large is roughly 10.0× cheaper on output tokens ($1.00 vs $10.00 per 1M).
Context windowGPT-4o
GPT-4o accepts 128K tokens vs 127K, 1.0× 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.
ModalitiesGPT-4o
GPT-4o supports 3 modalities (text, vision, audio) vs 1 for Sonar Large.
OpennessTie
Both are closed-weight, API-only.

On balance GPT-4o edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Sonar Large's 1. Sonar Large is roughly 10.0× cheaper on output tokens ($1.00 vs $10.00 per 1M). GPT-4o accepts 128K tokens vs 127K, 1.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. They differ in modality coverage, GPT-4o handles text, vision, audio while Sonar Large handles text, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. Both are closed-weight, API-only.

Sonar Large is the newer of the two, released 6 months after GPT-4o, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. GPT-4o is usually picked for chatbots and vision 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

Spec	GPT-4o	Sonar Large
Provider	OpenAI	Perplexity
Released	May 2024	Nov 2024
Modalities	text, vision, audio	text
Context window	128K tokens	127K tokens
Max output	,	,
Input · 1M	$2.50 / 1M tokens	$1.00 / 1M tokens
Output · 1M	$10.00 / 1M tokens	$1.00 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff	2023-10	,
Open weights	No	No
API available	Yes	Yes

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$22.50 vs $4.50
Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$225 vs $45.00
RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$435 vs $156

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: $22.50 vs $4.50 per month, model B comes out ahead. Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: $225 vs $45.00 per month, model B comes out ahead. RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: $435 vs $156 per month, model B comes out ahead.

Price calculator

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

Input tokens / dayOutput tokens / dayHorizon

GPT-4o$0.750
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.

GPT-4oSonar Large

MMLU88.7
HumanEval90.2

Pick GPT-4o if

GPT-4o fits when…

Native multimodal
Mature SDK and tooling
Multimodal needs covering vision, audio.

Pick Sonar Large if

Sonar Large fits when…

Web-search grounded
Citation-first output
Cheap
Cost-sensitive workloads, 10.0× cheaper than GPT-4o on output tokens.

Don't want either?

Consider GPT-5.5

OpenAI's mid-cycle GPT-5 refresh, improved reasoning, tool use, and multimodal grounding over the 2025 launch.

See GPT-5.5 specs GPT-4o vs GPT-5.5 Sonar Large vs GPT-5.5

Frequently asked

Is GPT-4o or Sonar Large cheaper?
Sonar Large is cheaper at $1.00 / 1M tokens per million output tokens, vs $10.00 / 1M tokens for GPT-4o.
Which has the larger context window?
GPT-4o accepts 128K tokens vs 127K for Sonar Large.
Is GPT-4o or Sonar Large better for coding?
Both GPT-4o 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?
Neither model ships open weights, both are accessible only via their respective providers' APIs.
When were GPT-4o and Sonar Large released?
GPT-4o was released by OpenAI on 2024-05-13. Sonar Large was released by Perplexity on 2024-11-19.

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