# GPT-5 Nano vs Sonar

> Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. GPT-5 Nano costs 7.3× 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-5-nano-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Sonar leads 52.6 to 39.4.
- GPT-5 Nano is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.40 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.
- GPT-5 Nano accepts more context: 400K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 33.4 | 37.8 |
| Rank | 234 | 184 |
| Context | 400K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $0.40 | $1 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- GPT-5 Nano: 33.3 (#248)
- Sonar: 35.1 (#217)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 34.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 38.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1351 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 718.67 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-5 Nano: 25.6 (#99)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 21.8% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 51.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-5 Nano: 16.4 (#291)
- Sonar: 20.3 (#221)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 2.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 62.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 20.7% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 27% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 9% | — |
| DTBench | 62.7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LMCA | 7.9% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.39 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.1 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- GPT-5 Nano: 29.1 (#221)
- Sonar: 31.3 (#197)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 20% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 81.1% | — |
| ProofBench | 12% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 54.6% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1318 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 95.2% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 8.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 2.1% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-5 Nano: 35.8 (#166)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 69.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 11.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 77.8% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.5% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 67.9% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1321 | — |

## Multimodal

- GPT-5 Nano: 30.7 (#102)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1159 | — |
| VPCT | 37.2% | — |

## Multilingual

- GPT-5 Nano: 45.5 (#167)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1313 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1355 | — |
| LMArena German | 1329 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1269 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1296 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1360 | — |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-5 Nano: 75.2 (#72)
- Sonar: 71.5 (#146)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| IFEval | 93.2% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1306 | — |

## Long Context

- GPT-5 Nano: 31.3 (#275)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1313 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-5 Nano: 39.4 (#244)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#166)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1250 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 705 | — |
| WildBench | 80.6% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1311 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-5 Nano better than Sonar?

Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. GPT-5 Nano costs 7.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, GPT-5 Nano or Sonar?

GPT-5 Nano is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.

### Is GPT-5 Nano or Sonar better for coding?

Sonar scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.1 versus 33.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-5 Nano does, with 400K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-5 Nano and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 Nano has 48 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.