LLM·Dex
Newsletter

Qwen3-72B 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

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

    Sonar Pro publishes pricing ($15.00 / 1M output tokens) while Qwen3-72B does not.

  • 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.

  • OpennessQwen3-72B

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

On balance Sonar Pro edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Qwen3-72B's 1. Sonar Pro publishes pricing ($15.00 / 1M output tokens) while Qwen3-72B does not. 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. Qwen3-72B ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Sonar Pro is API-only.

Qwen3-72B is the newer of the two, released 3 months after Sonar Pro, 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 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

SpecQwen3-72BSonar Pro
ProviderAlibabaPerplexity
ReleasedApr 2025Jan 2025
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens200K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$3.00 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$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, vs $31.50
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $315
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $540

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 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.

Qwen3-72BSonar Pro
  • 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 Pro if

Sonar Pro fits when…

  • Multi-step web search
  • Deep research output
  • Citations
  • Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 128K for Qwen3-72B.
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 Pro vs Qwen3-32B

Frequently asked

  • Is Qwen3-72B or Sonar Pro 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 Pro accepts 200K tokens vs 128K for Qwen3-72B.
  • Is Qwen3-72B or Sonar Pro better for coding?
    Both Qwen3-72B 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?
    Qwen3-72B ships open weights (Apache-2.0). Sonar Pro is API-only.
  • When were Qwen3-72B and Sonar Pro released?
    Qwen3-72B was released by Alibaba on 2025-04-29. Sonar Pro was released by Perplexity on 2025-01-21.
Friday digest

The week's AI launches, in your inbox.

One short email every Friday, new models, leaks, and quietly-shipped APIs you missed.