AI model comparison
Llama 4 Maverick vs Sonar
Pricing, context window, benchmarks, and features compared side by side. Or skip the guesswork and send one prompt to both.
Meta
Llama 4 Maverick
Llama 4 Maverick 17B Instruct (128E) is a high-capacity multimodal language model from Meta, built on a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture with 128 experts and 17 billion active parameters per forward
- Input / 1M
- $0.19
- Output / 1M
- $0.65
- Context
- 1.05M
Perplexity
Sonar
Sonar is lightweight, affordable, fast, and simple to use — now featuring citations and the ability to customize sources.
- Input / 1M
- $1
- Output / 1M
- $1
- Context
- 127K
At a glance
Quick verdict
How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.
Lower price
Llama 4 Maverick
3.6x cheaper for a typical chat
Higher intelligence score
Llama 4 Maverick
9.3 vs 7.7 on Artificial Analysis
Larger context window
Llama 4 Maverick
1.05M vs 127K tokens
Newer release
Llama 4 Maverick
Released April 5, 2025
Benchmarks
Benchmark scores
Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.
Intelligence index
Sonar7.7Coding index
SonarNot availableAgentic index
SonarNot availablePricing
Llama 4 Maverick vs Sonar API pricing
Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.
| Metric | Sonar | |
|---|---|---|
| Input tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.19 | $1 |
| Output tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.65 | $1 |
| Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens | $0.05 | Not available |
| Cache writePer 1M tokens | Not available | Not available |
| Web searchPer request | Not available | $0.005 |
What it costs in practice
Estimated cost per 1,000 requests at standard rates. Coding and long-document figures also show the cost when the input is already cached.
Chat message
2K in, 500 out
Sonar$2.50Coding task
30K in, 4K out
Sonar$34Long document summary
150K in, 2K out
Sonar$152Specs
Context window and capabilities
How much each model can read, how much it can write, and what it accepts as input.
| Metric | Sonar | |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 1.05M tokens | 127K tokens |
| Max output | 16K tokens | 114K tokens |
| Input types | Image, Text | Image, Text |
| Output types | Text | Text |
| Reasoning effort levels | Not available | Not available |
| Default reasoning effort | Not available | Not available |
| Release date | April 5, 2025 | January 27, 2025 |
Features
Supported features
API features available for each model.
| Metric | Sonar | |
|---|---|---|
| Tool calling | Supported | Not supported |
| Structured outputs | Supported | Not supported |
| JSON mode | Supported | Not supported |
| Reasoning | Not supported | Not supported |
| Temperature | Supported | Supported |
| Stop sequences | Supported | Not supported |
| Deterministic seed | Supported | Not supported |
| Verbosity control | Not supported | Not supported |
Keep exploring
More on these models
Other head-to-heads, the full model page, and the alternatives list for each model.
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
- Llama 4 Maverick vs gpt-oss-120b
- Llama 4 Maverick vs GPT-4o-mini
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Qwen3 Coder Next
- Llama 4 Maverick vs DeepSeek V3 0324
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Llama 4 Scout
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Mistral Small 4
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Mercury 2
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Mistral Large 3 2512
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Solar Pro 3
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Hermes 3 70B Instruct
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
SonarView full model details- Sonar vs GPT-4o-mini
- Sonar vs GPT-4.1 Mini
- Sonar vs DeepSeek V3 0324
- Sonar vs Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct
- Sonar vs Qwen3 Coder Next
- Sonar vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
- Sonar vs GLM 4.5V
- Sonar vs Hermes 4 405B
- Sonar vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
- Sonar vs Hermes 3 70B Instruct
- Sonar vs Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
- Sonar vs GPT-3.5 Turbo
Our take
Llama 4 Maverick is 3.6x cheaper for a typical chat. Llama 4 Maverick scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (9.3 vs 7.7). Llama 4 Maverick has the larger context window (1.05M vs 127K tokens). The right pick depends on your workload, so the quickest way to settle it is to send the same prompt to both and compare.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is Llama 4 Maverick or Sonar cheaper?
Llama 4 Maverick is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Llama 4 Maverick costs $0.19 per 1M input tokens and $0.65 per 1M output tokens, while Sonar costs $1 per 1M input tokens and $1 per 1M output tokens.
Which has a bigger context window, Llama 4 Maverick or Sonar?
Llama 4 Maverick supports up to 1.05M tokens of context, compared with 127K for Sonar.
Is Llama 4 Maverick smarter than Sonar?
On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Llama 4 Maverick scores 9.3 and Sonar scores 7.7, putting Llama 4 Maverick ahead. Benchmarks don't capture everything, so the best test is running your own prompts through both.
Can I use Llama 4 Maverick and Sonar at the same time?
Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see Llama 4 Maverick and Sonar answer side by side and keep the better response.
Why choose? Ask both.
Send one prompt to Llama 4 Maverick and Sonar at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.