Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Sonar

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 37.8 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 6.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.1

Rank #42 Confirmed

Sonar Perplexity

37.8

Rank #184 Confirmed

Summary

  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 20.3.
  • Sonar is cheaper at $1 / $1 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Sonar specifications
Claude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
ProviderAnthropicPerplexity
Noometry Index50.137.8
Released2026-02-172024-01-01
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M128K
Max output128K4K
Input $ / M tokens$3$1
Output $ / M tokens$15$1
Results tracked577

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.0 (#62), Sonar: 35.1 (#217)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
LMArena WebDev1521—
SciCode46.8%—
WeirdML66.1%—
LiveBench Coding—35.1%
LMArena Coding1504—
ALE-Bench1,327—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#26), Sonar: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
Terminal-Bench53.4%—
APEX-Agents43%—
OSWorld 2.09.3%—
DeepResearch Bench54.9%—
OSWorld72.1%—
ExploitBench23.6%—
GBAEval48.8%—
GDP.pdf18%—
LMArena Search1221—
Vending-Bench 27,204—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#40), Sonar: 20.3 (#221)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%—
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
CritPt3.1%—
Chess Puzzles13%—
Thematic Generalization76.3%—
LiveBench Reasoning—46.3%
LMArena Hard Prompts1485—
Mystery Game Puzzles16%—
DTBench89.9%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—37.9%
LMCA46.5%—
Epoch Capabilities Index152.25—
ForecastBench62—
LiveBench—46.9%

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.9 (#41), Sonar: 31.3 (#197)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202585.8%—
ProofBench45%—
LiveBench Math—41.6%
LMArena Math1463—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)32.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)8.3%—

Knowledge Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.6 (#60), Sonar: —

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
GPQA Diamond87.4%—
SimpleQA Verified35.5%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%—
LMArena Expert1500—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#61), Sonar: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
LMArena Vision1283—
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.6 (#39), Sonar: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
LMArena Non-English1440—
LMArena Chinese1491—
LMArena French1465—
LMArena German1428—
LMArena Japanese1419—
LMArena Korean1411—
LMArena Russian1440—
LMArena Spanish1465—

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.6 (#23), Sonar: 71.5 (#146)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
LiveBench Instruction Following—76.2%
LMArena Instruction Following1476—

Long Context Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#40), Sonar: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
LMArena Longer Query1479—

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.4 (#22), Sonar: 52.6 (#166)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Sonar
LMArena Text1458—
LMArena Creative Writing1435—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1810—
EQ-Bench 41207—
LMArena Multi-Turn1464—
LiveBench Language—44.1%

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Sonar?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 37.8 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 6.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Sonar?

Sonar is cheaper. It lists at $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Sonar better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.0 versus 35.1 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.

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