# GPT-4o mini vs Sonar

> Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 25.4 on the Noometry Index. GPT-4o mini costs 3.8× 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/gpt-4o-mini-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 7

## Summary

- They share 7 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4o mini scores higher in 0 categories and Sonar in 5 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Sonar leads 31.3 to 9.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is LiveBench Instruction Following: 56.8% for GPT-4o mini and 76.2% for Sonar.
- GPT-4o mini is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 25.4 | 37.8 |
| Rank | 337 | 184 |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $0.60 | $1 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- GPT-4o mini: 21.6 (#330)
- Sonar: 35.1 (#217)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Coding | 43.1% | 35.1% |
| Aider Polyglot | 3.6% | — |
| WeirdML | 11.8% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 46.1% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1290 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 57.4% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 83.5% | — |
| MBPP+ | 72.2% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-4o mini: 27.2 (#95)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| BALROG | 17.4% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-4o mini: 8.7 (#343)
- Sonar: 20.3 (#221)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Reasoning | 32.8% | 46.3% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 50% | 37.9% |
| LiveBench | 41.3% | 46.9% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| SimpleBench | 10.7% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 28.8% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1267 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 12% | — |
| DTBench | 54.4% | — |
| LMCA | 10.4% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 126.56 | — |
| PIQA | 88.7% | — |

## Math

- GPT-4o mini: 9.9 (#307)
- Sonar: 31.3 (#197)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | 36.3% | 41.6% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 0.7% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.9% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 28% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1267 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 52.6% | — |
| GSM8K | 91.3% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-4o mini: 17.7 (#279)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 37.7% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 8.3% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 60.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 37.2% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 36.8% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1235 | — |
| BoolQ | 88.7% | — |
| MMLU | 81.8% | — |

## Multimodal

- GPT-4o mini: 25.3 (#117)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1066 | — |
| Video-MME | 64.8% | — |
| GeoBench | 64% | — |
| VPCT | 34% | — |

## Multilingual

- GPT-4o mini: 42.2 (#194)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1266 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1264 | — |
| LMArena French | 1296 | — |
| LMArena German | 1272 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1216 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1195 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1275 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1276 | — |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-4o mini: 62.1 (#234)
- Sonar: 71.5 (#146)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 56.8% | 76.2% |
| IFEval | 78.2% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1259 | — |

## Long Context

- GPT-4o mini: 39.1 (#181)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1289 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-4o mini: 39.7 (#243)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#166)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Language | 28.6% | 44.1% |
| LMArena Text | 1286 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1268 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 67.2% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 873 | — |
| WildBench | 79.1% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1285 | — |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-4o mini better than Sonar?

Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 25.4 on the Noometry Index. GPT-4o mini costs 3.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, GPT-4o mini or Sonar?

GPT-4o mini is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.

### Is GPT-4o mini or Sonar better for coding?

Sonar scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.1 versus 21.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 128K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-4o mini and Sonar share?

7 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4o mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.