Model comparison
gpt-oss-120b vs Sonar
Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 36.0 on the Noometry Index. gpt-oss-120b costs 14× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
PerplexitySummary
- The widest gap is in math, where gpt-oss-120b leads 50.6 to 31.3.
- gpt-oss-120b is cheaper at $0.037 / $0.17 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.
- gpt-oss-120b accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.
- gpt-oss-120b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| gpt-oss-120b | Sonar | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 36.0 | 37.8 |
| Released | 2025-08-05 | 2024-01-01 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 131K | 128K |
| Max output | 41K | 4K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.037 | $1 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.17 | $1 |
| Results tracked | 48 | 7 |
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Category by category
Coding Sonar leads
gpt-oss-120b: 33.2 (#251), Sonar: 35.1 (#217)
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 26% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 41.8% | — |
| SciCode | 36% | — |
| WeirdML | 48.2% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 575.62 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.41 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
gpt-oss-120b: 12.1 (#145), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 18.7% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 4.4% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 56.6% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | -21.53 | — |
Reasoning Too close to call
gpt-oss-120b: 19.5 (#236), Sonar: 20.3 (#221)
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 22.1% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 58.6% | — |
| CritPt | 1.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 20% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 2% | — |
| DTBench | 76.3% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LMCA | 22.1% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 25% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.94 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |
Math gpt-oss-120b leads
gpt-oss-120b: 50.6 (#43), Sonar: 31.3 (#197)
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 88.9% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 68.8% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1388 | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
gpt-oss-120b: 42.3 (#89), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 75.8% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.5% | — |
| Confabulations | 15.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 14.2% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 68.4% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
gpt-oss-120b: 48.2 (#142), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1350 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1384 | — |
| LMArena French | 1370 | — |
| LMArena German | 1355 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1332 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1283 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1388 | — |
Instruction Following Sonar leads
gpt-oss-120b: 69.5 (#168), Sonar: 71.5 (#146)
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| IFEval | 83.6% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
gpt-oss-120b: 31.4 (#273), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1319 | — |
Writing & Preference Sonar leads
gpt-oss-120b: 46.7 (#213), Sonar: 52.6 (#166)
| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1366 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1274 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77.1% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 961 | — |
| WildBench | 84.5% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1340 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |
Frequently asked questions
Is gpt-oss-120b better than Sonar?
Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 36.0 on the Noometry Index. gpt-oss-120b costs 14× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, gpt-oss-120b or Sonar?
gpt-oss-120b is cheaper. It lists at $0.037 per million input tokens and $0.17 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.
Is gpt-oss-120b or Sonar better for coding?
Sonar scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.1 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
gpt-oss-120b does, with 131K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do gpt-oss-120b and Sonar share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. gpt-oss-120b has 48 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.