Sonar Pro vs GPT-5.4
Use Sonar Pro when real-time information is essential. Use GPT-5.4 when static reasoning quality matters most.
Perplexity Sonar Pro ($3.00/M input) vs GPT-5.4 ($2.50/M input) — similar price, very different capabilities. Sonar Pro has live web search built in, making it uniquely suited for questions requiring current information. GPT-5.4 has no web access by default but outperforms on reasoning tasks. If your app's core value comes from up-to-date information, Sonar Pro is hard to beat.
Side-by-side pricing
| Sonar Pro | GPT-5.4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Perplexity | OpenAI |
| Input price/1M | $3.00 | $2.50 |
| Output price/1M | $15.00 | $15.00 |
| Cache read/1M | — | $0.25 |
| Context window | 200K | 1M |
| Vision | ✗ | ✓ |
| Tool use | ✗ | ✓ |
| Prompt caching | ✗ | ✓ |
| Speed tier | Medium | Standard |
Prices verified 2026-08-20. See changelog for history.
Winner by task
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does Perplexity Sonar always have current information?
Sonar runs live web searches at query time, so it has information up to the current moment. The quality of information depends on what sources Perplexity indexes and the freshness of the search index. For very recent events (last few hours), some information may not yet be indexed.
Prices verified 2026-08-20. See methodology for calculation details.