# Claude Opus 4.1 vs Sonar

> Claude Opus 4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.0 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 30× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-4-1-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in math, where Sonar leads 33.7 to 22.3.
- Sonar is cheaper at $1 / $1 per million input/output tokens, against $15 / $75 for Claude Opus 4.1.
- Claude Opus 4.1 accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 41.0 | 38.5 |
| Rank | 142 | 187 |
| Context | 200K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $15 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $75 | $1 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 4.1: 44.4 (#73)
- Sonar: 35.7 (#221)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1390 | — |
| WeirdML | 45.9% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1479 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 674.77 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.34 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 4.1: 35.0 (#41)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 38% | — |
| GDPval | 43.6% | — |
| Cybench | 42% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 48.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1148 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 66.8% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 4.1: 32.2 (#76)
- Sonar: 21.1 (#227)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 60% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 7% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 7.2% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 7.9% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1443 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 21% | — |
| DTBench | 80% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LMCA | 37.1% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 144.12 | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- Claude Opus 4.1: 22.3 (#277)
- Sonar: 33.7 (#200)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 12.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 68.9% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1431 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 7.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 4.1: 42.0 (#101)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 77.3% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 11.5% | — |
| Confabulations | 17.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 11.8% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1439 | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 4.1: 26.8 (#119)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| VPCT | 35% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 4.1: 52.0 (#95)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1405 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1427 | — |
| LMArena French | 1431 | — |
| LMArena German | 1413 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1378 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1380 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1422 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1448 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 4.1: 75.6 (#58)
- Sonar: 71.4 (#150)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1435 | — |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 4.1: 44.5 (#63)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1455 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 4.1: 62.4 (#74)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#167)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1419 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1412 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 84.7% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1444 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 4.1 better than Sonar?

Claude Opus 4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.0 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 30× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.1 or Sonar?

Sonar is cheaper. It lists at $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.1 lists at $15 and $75.

### Is Claude Opus 4.1 or Sonar better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.4 versus 35.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.1 does, with 200K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.1 and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.1 has 48 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.