AI model comparison
Sonar vs Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Pricing, context window, benchmarks, and features compared side by side. Or skip the guesswork and send one prompt to both.
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
The Meta Llama 3.3 multilingual large language model (LLM) is a pretrained and instruction tuned generative model in 70B (text in/text out).
- Input / 1M
- $0.22
- Output / 1M
- $0.50
- Context
- 131K
At a glance
Quick verdict
How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.
Lower price
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
3.6x cheaper for a typical chat
Higher intelligence score
Tie
7.7 vs 7.7 on Artificial Analysis
Larger context window
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
131K vs 127K tokens
Newer release
Sonar
Released January 27, 2025
Benchmarks
Benchmark scores
Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.
Intelligence index
Sonar7.7Coding index
SonarNot availableAgentic index
SonarNot availablePricing
Sonar vs Llama 3.3 70B Instruct API pricing
Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.
| Metric | Sonar | |
|---|---|---|
| Input tokensPer 1M tokens | $1 | $0.22 |
| Output tokensPer 1M tokens | $1 | $0.50 |
| Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens | Not available | $0.11 |
| Cache writePer 1M tokens | Not available | Not available |
| Web searchPer request | $0.005 | Not available |
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 | 127K tokens | 131K tokens |
| Max output | 114K tokens | 16K tokens |
| Input types | Image, Text | Text |
| Output types | Text | Text |
| Reasoning effort levels | Not available | Not available |
| Default reasoning effort | Not available | Not available |
| Release date | January 27, 2025 | December 6, 2024 |
Features
Supported features
API features available for each model.
| Metric | Sonar | |
|---|---|---|
| Tool calling | Not supported | Supported |
| Structured outputs | Not supported | Supported |
| JSON mode | Not supported | Supported |
| Reasoning | Not supported | Not supported |
| Temperature | Supported | Supported |
| Stop sequences | Not supported | Supported |
| Deterministic seed | Not supported | 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.
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- Llama 3.3 70B Instruct vs Llama 3.2 3B Instruct
- Llama 3.3 70B Instruct vs Llama 3.2 1B Instruct
Our take
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct is 3.6x cheaper for a typical chat. Llama 3.3 70B Instruct has the larger context window (131K 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 Sonar or Llama 3.3 70B Instruct cheaper?
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Llama 3.3 70B Instruct costs $0.22 per 1M input tokens and $0.50 per 1M output tokens, while Sonar costs $1 per 1M input tokens and $1 per 1M output tokens.
Which has a bigger context window, Sonar or Llama 3.3 70B Instruct?
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct supports up to 131K tokens of context, compared with 127K for Sonar.
Is Sonar smarter than Llama 3.3 70B Instruct?
On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Sonar scores 7.7 and Llama 3.3 70B Instruct scores 7.7, putting Sonar ahead. Benchmarks don't capture everything, so the best test is running your own prompts through both.
Can I use Sonar and Llama 3.3 70B Instruct at the same time?
Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see Sonar and Llama 3.3 70B Instruct answer side by side and keep the better response.
Why choose? Ask both.
Send one prompt to Sonar and Llama 3.3 70B Instruct at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.