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Qwen3-72B 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

Qwen3-72B specs · Sonar Large specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceSonar Large

    Sonar Large publishes pricing ($1.00 / 1M output tokens) while Qwen3-72B does not.

  • Context windowQwen3-72B

    Qwen3-72B 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.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessQwen3-72B

    Qwen3-72B ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Sonar Large is API-only.

On balance Qwen3-72B edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Sonar Large's 1. Sonar Large publishes pricing ($1.00 / 1M output tokens) while Qwen3-72B does not. Qwen3-72B 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. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Qwen3-72B ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Sonar Large is API-only.

Qwen3-72B is the newer of the two, released 5 months after Sonar Large, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Qwen3-72B is usually picked for open source llm and commercial use llm 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

SpecQwen3-72BSonar Large
ProviderAlibabaPerplexity
ReleasedApr 2025Nov 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens127K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$1.00 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$1.00 / 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, 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.

  • Qwen3-72BPricing 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.

Qwen3-72BSonar Large
  • MMLU84.0
Pick Qwen3-72B if

Qwen3-72B fits when…

  • Apache-2.0 license
  • Strongest open-weight on Chinese
  • Strong multilingual coverage
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Apache-2.0).
Pick Sonar Large if

Sonar Large fits when…

  • Web-search grounded
  • Citation-first output
  • Cheap
Don't want either?

Consider Qwen3-32B

Alibaba's mid-size Qwen3, sweet spot for self-hosting at modest hardware budgets.

See Qwen3-32B specsQwen3-72B vs Qwen3-32BSonar Large vs Qwen3-32B

Frequently asked

  • Is Qwen3-72B 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?
    Qwen3-72B accepts 128K tokens vs 127K for Sonar Large.
  • Is Qwen3-72B or Sonar Large better for coding?
    Both Qwen3-72B 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?
    Qwen3-72B ships open weights (Apache-2.0). Sonar Large is API-only.
  • When were Qwen3-72B and Sonar Large released?
    Qwen3-72B was released by Alibaba on 2025-04-29. Sonar Large was released by Perplexity on 2024-11-19.
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