AI Model Watch
Models / Perplexity

Sonar

GA

Lightweight, cost-effective real-time web search model with grounding/citations. 128K context. Token pricing $1/$1 per 1M in/out. Additional per-request search fee NOT included in token price: $5/$8/$12 per 1,000 requests for low/medium/high search context size (pricing page). Supports image uploads (added Apr 2025) and file attachments PDF/DOC/DOCX/TXT/RTF (added Sep 2025). Max output tokens not published by Perplexity. Knowledge cutoff not published (search-grounded model with live web access). Pricing page fetched 2026-06-28.

Sonar by Perplexity costs $1 per 1M input tokens and $1 per 1M output tokens ($1/1M blended), with a 128K (128.000-token) context window. It is generally available (GA).

Last verified: 13 Aug 2026 · sourced from official provider documentation

Provider
Perplexity
Status
GA
Input price
$1 / 1M tokens
Output price
$1 / 1M tokens
Cached input
—
Blended price
$1 / 1M tokens
Context window
128.000 tokens (128K)
Max output
—
Modality
text, image
Open weights
No — API only
Knowledge cutoff
—
Released
Jan 2025
API string
sonar

Source: Perplexity official documentation ↗

See also

Compare Sonar head-to-head

Sonar vs Sonar Pro→

$1 vs $6 blended /M · same family

Sonar vs Sonar Reasoning Pro→

$1 vs $3.50 blended /M · same family

FAQ

Sonar — questions & answers

How much does Sonar cost?

Sonar is priced at $1 per 1M input tokens and $1 per 1M output tokens ($1/1M blended at a 3:1 input-to-output ratio).

What is the context window of Sonar?

Sonar has a 128.000-token context window (128K).

Is Sonar deprecated?

No — Sonar is generally available (GA) and not currently scheduled for deprecation or retirement in our tracker.

Does Sonar support image or vision input?

Yes — Sonar accepts image input. Listed modalities: text, image.

Can I self-host Sonar?

No — Sonar is proprietary. Its weights are not publicly released, so it is available only through Perplexity's API (or hosted partners), not for self-hosting.

What is the API model string for Sonar?

The API model identifier for Sonar is "sonar" when calling Perplexity's API.