Model comparison
Qwen3-30B-A3B vs Sonar
Qwen3-30B-A3B and Sonar score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.9 vs 38.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)
PerplexitySummary
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3-30B-A3B leads 37.4 to 33.7.
- Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper at $0.12 / $0.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.
- Sonar accepts more context: 128K tokens versus 41K.
- Qwen3-30B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 38.9 | 38.5 |
| Released | 2025-04-28 | 2024-01-01 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 41K | 128K |
| Max output | 16K | 4K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.12 | $1 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $1 |
| Results tracked | 32 | 7 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194), Sonar: 35.7 (#221)
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 33.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 29.8% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1416 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 41.4% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204), Sonar: 21.1 (#227)
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 54.9% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 8% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1398 | — |
| DTBench | 69.3% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LMCA | 22.4% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.63 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |
Math Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157), Sonar: 33.7 (#200)
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 47.8% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 70.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1394 | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 70.1% | — |
| Confabulations | 12.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1396 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1372 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1433 | — |
| LMArena French | 1418 | — |
| LMArena German | 1380 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1337 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1331 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1370 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1404 | — |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142), Sonar: 71.4 (#150)
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1363 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 40.6% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1379 | — |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143), Sonar: 52.6 (#167)
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1384 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1317 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 75.3% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1378 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Qwen3-30B-A3B better than Sonar?
Qwen3-30B-A3B and Sonar score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.9 vs 38.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Qwen3-30B-A3B or Sonar?
Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.
Is Qwen3-30B-A3B or Sonar better for coding?
Qwen3-30B-A3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.5 versus 35.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Sonar does, with 128K tokens against 41K.
How many benchmarks do Qwen3-30B-A3B and Sonar share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.