# Codestral vs Sonar

> Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in coding, where Sonar leads 35.1 to 26.9.
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.
- Codestral accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 128K.
- Codestral has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 30.1 | 37.8 |
| Rank | 287 | 184 |
| Context | 256K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $1 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Codestral: 26.9 (#316)
- Sonar: 35.1 (#217)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.1 (#244)
- Sonar: 20.3 (#221)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- Sonar: 31.3 (#197)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- Sonar: 71.5 (#146)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- Sonar: 52.6 (#166)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than Sonar?

Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral or Sonar?

Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.

### Is Codestral or Sonar better for coding?

Sonar scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.1 versus 26.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Codestral does, with 256K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.