# Magistral Small vs Sonar

> Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 29.9 on the Noometry Index.

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

## Summary

- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Sonar leads 20.3 to 6.9.
- Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Magistral Small | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 29.9 | 37.8 |
| Rank | 289 | 184 |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $1.50 | $1 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Magistral Small: 37.8 (#172)
- Sonar: 35.1 (#217)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.2% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |

## Reasoning

- Magistral Small: 6.9 (#345)
- Sonar: 20.3 (#221)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| DTBench | 61.3% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- Magistral Small: 24.9 (#253)
- Sonar: 31.3 (#197)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |

## Knowledge

- Magistral Small: 30.9 (#215)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | — |

## Instruction Following

- Magistral Small: —
- Sonar: 71.5 (#146)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |

## Writing & Preference

- Magistral Small: —
- Sonar: 52.6 (#166)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is Magistral Small better than Sonar?

Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 29.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Sonar?

Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.

### Is Magistral Small or Sonar better for coding?

Magistral Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.8 versus 35.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 128K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.