# Grok 4.5 vs Sonar

> Grok 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 55.0 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/grok-4-5-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Grok 4.5 leads 56.1 to 21.1.
- Sonar is cheaper at $1 / $1 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $6 for Grok 4.5.
- Grok 4.5 accepts more context: 500K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 55.0 | 38.5 |
| Rank | 25 | 187 |
| Context | 500K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $6 | $1 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Grok 4.5: 52.2 (#35)
- Sonar: 35.7 (#221)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1553 | — |
| SciCode | 54.1% | — |
| WeirdML | 46.4% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1474 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,309 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Grok 4.5: 44.4 (#17)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 56.2% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 47.9% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 23.4% | — |
| GBAEval | 65.4% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 14% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1213 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 3,887 | — |

## Reasoning

- Grok 4.5: 56.1 (#25)
- Sonar: 21.1 (#227)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 52.6% | — |
| SimpleBench | 70% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.5% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 79.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 87.2% | — |
| CritPt | 15.4% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 36% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1462 | — |
| DTBench | 96.5% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LMCA | 45.2% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 74.4% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 153.92 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- Grok 4.5: 60.9 (#35)
- Sonar: 33.7 (#200)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 57.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 24.4% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 97.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 31% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1459 | — |

## Knowledge

- Grok 4.5: 62.3 (#24)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 93.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 48.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1466 | — |

## Multimodal

- Grok 4.5: 37.6 (#72)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1288 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 27.3% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 22.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1452 | — |

## Multilingual

- Grok 4.5: 54.4 (#42)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1496 | — |
| LMArena French | 1456 | — |
| LMArena German | 1446 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1404 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1448 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1450 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Grok 4.5: 76.0 (#48)
- Sonar: 71.4 (#150)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1446 | — |

## Long Context

- Grok 4.5: 44.8 (#56)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1463 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Grok 4.5: 65.8 (#42)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#167)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1448 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1442 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1579 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1456 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is Grok 4.5 better than Sonar?

Grok 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 55.0 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Grok 4.5 or Sonar?

Sonar is cheaper. It lists at $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens; Grok 4.5 lists at $2 and $6.

### Is Grok 4.5 or Sonar better for coding?

Grok 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 52.2 versus 35.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Grok 4.5 does, with 500K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Grok 4.5 and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok 4.5 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.