# gpt-oss-120b vs Sonar

> Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.5 to 36.3 on the Noometry Index. gpt-oss-120b costs 14× 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-oss-120b-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in math, where gpt-oss-120b leads 52.5 to 33.7.
- gpt-oss-120b is cheaper at $0.037 / $0.17 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.
- gpt-oss-120b accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.
- gpt-oss-120b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 36.3 | 38.5 |
| Rank | 217 | 187 |
| Context | 131K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.037 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $0.17 | $1 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- gpt-oss-120b: 33.5 (#256)
- Sonar: 35.7 (#221)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 26% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 41.8% | — |
| SciCode | 36% | — |
| WeirdML | 48.2% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 575.62 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.41 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- gpt-oss-120b: 12.2 (#153)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 18.7% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 4.4% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 56.6% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | -21.53 | — |

## Reasoning

- gpt-oss-120b: 20.0 (#245)
- Sonar: 21.1 (#227)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 22.1% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 58.6% | — |
| CritPt | 1.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 20% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 2% | — |
| DTBench | 76.3% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LMCA | 22.1% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 25% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.93 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- gpt-oss-120b: 52.5 (#50)
- Sonar: 33.7 (#200)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 88.9% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 68.8% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1389 | — |

## Knowledge

- gpt-oss-120b: 42.4 (#96)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 75.8% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.5% | — |
| Confabulations | 15.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 14.2% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 68.4% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1356 | — |

## Multilingual

- gpt-oss-120b: 48.0 (#147)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1351 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1385 | — |
| LMArena French | 1369 | — |
| LMArena German | 1353 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1331 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1282 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1389 | — |

## Instruction Following

- gpt-oss-120b: 69.3 (#173)
- Sonar: 71.4 (#150)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| IFEval | 83.6% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1318 | — |

## Long Context

- gpt-oss-120b: 31.4 (#278)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1319 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- gpt-oss-120b: 46.5 (#217)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#167)

| Benchmark | gpt-oss-120b | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1365 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1275 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77.1% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 961 | — |
| WildBench | 84.5% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1340 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is gpt-oss-120b better than Sonar?

Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.5 to 36.3 on the Noometry Index. gpt-oss-120b costs 14× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, gpt-oss-120b or Sonar?

gpt-oss-120b is cheaper. It lists at $0.037 per million input tokens and $0.17 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.

### Is gpt-oss-120b or Sonar better for coding?

Sonar scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.7 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

gpt-oss-120b does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do gpt-oss-120b and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. gpt-oss-120b has 48 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.