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Mistral Small vs Sonar Pro

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

Updated

Mistral Small specs · Sonar Pro specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceMistral Small

    Mistral Small is roughly 25.0× cheaper on output tokens ($0.60 vs $15.00 per 1M).

  • Context windowSonar Pro

    Sonar Pro accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× 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.

  • OpennessMistral Small

    Mistral Small ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Sonar Pro is API-only.

On balance Mistral Small edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Sonar Pro's 1. Mistral Small is roughly 25.0× cheaper on output tokens ($0.60 vs $15.00 per 1M). Sonar Pro accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× 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. Mistral Small ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Sonar Pro is API-only.

Sonar Pro is the newer of the two, released 4 months after Mistral Small, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Mistral Small is usually picked for cheapest llm and fastest llm workloads, while Sonar Pro 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

SpecMistral SmallSonar Pro
ProviderMistralPerplexity
ReleasedSep 2024Jan 2025
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens200K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1M$0.20 / 1M tokens$3.00 / 1M tokens
Output · 1M$0.60 / 1M tokens$15.00 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Apache-2.0)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$1.50 vs $31.50
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$15.00 vs $315
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$33.60 vs $540

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: $1.50 vs $31.50 per month, model A comes out ahead. Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: $15.00 vs $315 per month, model A comes out ahead. RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: $33.60 vs $540 per month, model A 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.

  • Mistral Small$0.050
  • Sonar Pro$1.05

Benchmarks compared

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

Benchmark scores not yet available. We only publish numbers we can source from official model cards or independent leaderboards, see methodology.
Pick Mistral Small if

Mistral Small fits when…

  • Apache-2.0 open-weight
  • Fast and cheap
  • Cost-sensitive workloads, 25.0× cheaper than Sonar Pro on output tokens.
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Apache-2.0).
Pick Sonar Pro if

Sonar Pro fits when…

  • Multi-step web search
  • Deep research output
  • Citations
  • Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 128K for Mistral Small.
Don't want either?

Consider Mistral Large 2

Mistral's flagship API model, strong on code and reasoning, EU-friendly hosting.

See Mistral Large 2 specsMistral Small vs Mistral Large 2Sonar Pro vs Mistral Large 2

Frequently asked

  • Is Mistral Small or Sonar Pro cheaper?
    Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.60 / 1M tokens per million output tokens, vs $15.00 / 1M tokens for Sonar Pro.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Sonar Pro accepts 200K tokens vs 128K for Mistral Small.
  • Is Mistral Small or Sonar Pro better for coding?
    Both Mistral Small and Sonar Pro 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?
    Mistral Small ships open weights (Apache-2.0). Sonar Pro is API-only.
  • When were Mistral Small and Sonar Pro released?
    Mistral Small was released by Mistral on 2024-09-18. Sonar Pro was released by Perplexity on 2025-01-21.
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