# Qwen3-30B-A3B vs Sonar

> Qwen3-30B-A3B and Sonar score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.9 vs 38.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/qwen3-30b-a3b-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3-30B-A3B leads 37.4 to 33.7.
- Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper at $0.12 / $0.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.
- Sonar accepts more context: 128K tokens versus 41K.
- Qwen3-30B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 38.9 | 38.5 |
| Rank | 179 | 187 |
| Context | 41K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.12 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $0.50 | $1 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194)
- Sonar: 35.7 (#221)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 33.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 29.8% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1416 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 41.4% | — |

## Reasoning

- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204)
- Sonar: 21.1 (#227)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 54.9% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 8% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1398 | — |
| DTBench | 69.3% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LMCA | 22.4% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.63 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157)
- Sonar: 33.7 (#200)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 47.8% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 70.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1394 | — |

## Knowledge

- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 70.1% | — |
| Confabulations | 12.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1396 | — |

## Multilingual

- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1372 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1433 | — |
| LMArena French | 1418 | — |
| LMArena German | 1380 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1337 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1331 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1370 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1404 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142)
- Sonar: 71.4 (#150)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1363 | — |

## Long Context

- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 40.6% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1379 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#167)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1384 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1317 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 75.3% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1378 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is Qwen3-30B-A3B better than Sonar?

Qwen3-30B-A3B and Sonar score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.9 vs 38.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Qwen3-30B-A3B or Sonar?

Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.

### Is Qwen3-30B-A3B or Sonar better for coding?

Qwen3-30B-A3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.5 versus 35.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Sonar does, with 128K tokens against 41K.

### How many benchmarks do Qwen3-30B-A3B and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.