Model comparison

GPT-5.6 Sol vs Sonar

GPT-5.6 Sol is the stronger model overall, scoring 65.0 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 8.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5.6 Sol's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.

GPT-5.6 Sol OpenAI

65.0

Rank #7 Confirmed

Sonar Perplexity

38.5

Rank #187 Confirmed

Summary

  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where GPT-5.6 Sol leads 74.8 to 21.1.
  • Sonar is cheaper at $1 / $1 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for GPT-5.6 Sol.
  • GPT-5.6 Sol accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

GPT-5.6 Sol and Sonar specifications
GPT-5.6 SolSonar
ProviderOpenAIPerplexity
Noometry Index65.038.5
Released2026-07-092024-01-01
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1.05M128K
Max output128K4K
Input $ / M tokens$4$1
Output $ / M tokens$20$1
Results tracked657

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Category by category

Coding GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 65.1 (#7), Sonar: 35.7 (#221)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolSonar
DeepSWE72.7%—
FrontierCode47.5%—
CursorBench41.7%—
LMArena WebDev1618—
FrontierSWE32.2%—
SciCode57.1%—
GSO76.5%—
WeirdML89.4%—
LiveBench Coding—35.1%
LMArena Coding1498—
MirrorCode20%—
ALE-Bench2,177—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 50.3 (#7), Sonar: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolSonar
APEX-Agents51.4%—
OSWorld 2.027.3%—
τ²-bench Banking46.9%—
PostTrainBench36.2%—
BALROG60%—
GBAEval52.6%—
GDP.pdf30.7%—
LMArena Search1257—
Vending-Bench 29,619—

Reasoning GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 74.8 (#8), Sonar: 21.1 (#227)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolSonar
ARC-AGI-292.5%—
SimpleBench71.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark67%—
NYT Connections (extended)93.8%—
ARC-AGI-197.5%—
CritPt32.3%—
Chess Puzzles64%—
EnigmaEval37.1%—
EBR-Bench44.8%—
LiveBench Reasoning—46.3%
LMArena Hard Prompts1484—
Mystery Game Puzzles58%—
DTBench96%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—37.9%
LMCA59.2%—
Surface Evolver Bench93.1%—
Bench to the Future 30.14—
Epoch Capabilities Index161.66—
LiveBench—46.9%

Math GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 85.6 (#9), Sonar: 33.7 (#200)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolSonar
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)89.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 482.9%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025100%—
ProofBench83%—
LiveBench Math—41.6%
LMArena Math1474—
FrontierMath Erdős0%—

Knowledge Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 64.3 (#18), Sonar: —

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolSonar
GPQA Diamond93.5%—
SimpleQA Verified69.7%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.4%—
LMArena Expert1516—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 48.6 (#9), Sonar: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolSonar
LMArena Vision1281—
Blueprint-Bench 233.6%—
Furniture Assembly56.7%—
LMArena Document1483—

Multilingual Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 55.3 (#32), Sonar: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolSonar
LMArena Non-English1452—
LMArena Chinese1527—
LMArena French1477—
LMArena German1476—
LMArena Japanese1471—
LMArena Korean1442—
LMArena Russian1468—
LMArena Spanish1441—

Instruction Following GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 77.7 (#16), Sonar: 71.4 (#150)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolSonar
LiveBench Instruction Following—76.2%
LMArena Instruction Following1482—

Long Context Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 45.4 (#42), Sonar: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolSonar
LMArena Longer Query1480—

Writing & Preference GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 73.3 (#12), Sonar: 52.6 (#167)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolSonar
LMArena Text1457—
LMArena Creative Writing1448—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1972—
EQ-Bench 41250—
LMArena Multi-Turn1460—
LiveBench Language—44.1%

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-5.6 Sol better than Sonar?

GPT-5.6 Sol is the stronger model overall, scoring 65.0 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 8.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5.6 Sol's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, GPT-5.6 Sol or Sonar?

Sonar is cheaper. It lists at $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens; GPT-5.6 Sol lists at $4 and $20.

Is GPT-5.6 Sol or Sonar better for coding?

GPT-5.6 Sol scores higher on coding benchmarks: 65.1 versus 35.7 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-5.6 Sol does, with 1.05M tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-5.6 Sol and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5.6 Sol has 65 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.

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