Sonar Pro Search
Perplexity · released Oct 30, 2025
- Type
- Closed
- Input
- $3.00
- Output
- $15.00
- Cached
- None held
List price · per 1M tokens · Perplexity at 200K context · source ↗
Our take
Written Sep 2, 2026Sonar Pro Search is Perplexity's premium search-augmented model built for research and long-document work rather than raw chat quality. It handles up to 200,000 tokens in a single request and accepts both text and images, though no benchmark scores are available to verify its capabilities.
Choose this for deep research workflows where citation quality and search grounding matter more than chat leaderboard scores, or for analysing very long documents that need the full 200K context. Use it if you are already in the Perplexity ecosystem and value the quoted 40 tokens per second throughput. Skip it if you need verified quality data, if output cost is a concern, or if you want to compare it against other Sonar tiers.
The case for it
- Among the largest request limits we hold for any proprietary text model, at 200,000 tokens.
- Identical pricing across both listed providers removes arbitrage friction.
The case against it
- No benchmark scores in our data — chat, reasoning, coding and safety are all unverified.
- Output cost is five times the input cost, a steep premium on generation-heavy workloads.
- Throughput is modest at 40 tokens per second on the direct route, and unverified on OpenRouter.
How good is it?
We hold no score for this model.
So there is no figure here for everyday use, coding, agent work or writing. That is a gap in our data, not a low score.
Where to rent it
Prices checked 2 hours ago — each listing carries its own date.
Perplexity, through OpenRouter
The lab is also the cheapest we hold. The strip above and this offer are the same one, so nothing on this page undercuts Perplexity on 200K of context.
- per 1M tokens
- $3.00 in / $15.00 out
- Context served
- 200K
- Throughput
- ~34 tok/s
| Provider | In / out per 1M tokens | Context | Throughput | Trains on prompts | Logs prompts | Zero retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenRouterOpenRouter's own listing | $3.00 / $15.00checked 2 hours ago | 200K | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| PerplexityThrough OpenRouter | $3.00 / $15.00checked 2 hours ago | 200K8K max reply | 34 tok/s | No | No | Confirmed |
OpenRouterAcross the 2 listings we hold: 1 says it does not train on prompts, 0 say they do and 1 does not say. 1 appears in the zero-retention registry we check; the rest are unknown to us.
What each host's API supports
From the parameter list each endpoint publishes. Streaming is omitted: nothing we hold reports it, for any model.
| Provider | Tool calling | JSON output | Strict schema |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenRouterOpenRouter's own listing | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| PerplexityThrough OpenRouter | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Tool calling: 0 of 2 listings say yes, 2 say no. JSON output: 0 of 2 listings say yes, 2 say no. Strict schema: 2 of 2 listings say yes.
When we formed this view
Recent changes
What moved
first indexed by our pipelineEach date is the day we first saw the change, or the day the maker announced it.
What we do not know about this model yet
- No independent board has scored it, so we hold no quality figures at all.
- Nothing we hold says whether an endpoint streams, so we do not show it either way.
- 1 of 2 listings does not say whether it trains on prompts.
- We hold no cached-input rate for any of its listings.
- We hold no batch or off-peak rate for any of its listings.
Licence and identifiers
What the licence allowsWe hold no licence record for this model. Inside are the identifiers you need to pull it — its Hugging Face repo where we have one, our slug and a machine-readable card.
Licence
We hold no licence record for this model, and no record of published weights either — so we can neither summarise its terms nor point you at the weights.
Identifiers
- Takes in, gives back
- Text and images in, text out
- Catalogue slug
- perplexity-sonar-pro-search