Llama 3.1 405B vs Sonar Pro
Meta vs Perplexity · Prices checked 12 August 2026
On blended cost Llama 3.1 405B undercuts Sonar Pro by about 8.3×: $0.800 per million tokens versus $6.60. A single 100K-input, 10K-output job costs $0.088 on Llama 3.1 405B against $0.450 on Sonar Pro.
On shared benchmarks it is a draw: 4 suites in common and honours even. On context, Sonar Pro is the larger at 200,000 tokens versus 128,000.
Pricing and capacity
| Metric | Llama 3.1 405B | Sonar Pro | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input / 1M tokens | $0.800 | $3.00 | 3.8× |
| Output / 1M tokens | $0.800 | $15.00 | 18.8× |
| Blended · 70/30calculated | $0.800 | $6.60 | 8.3× |
| Blended · 50/50calculated | $0.800 | $9.00 | 11.3× |
| Blended · 80/20calculated | $0.800 | $5.40 | 6.7× |
| Blended · 20/80calculated | $0.800 | $12.60 | 15.7× |
| Job cost · 100K + 10Kcalculated | $0.088 | $0.450 | 5.1× |
| Job cost · 1M + 100Kcalculated | $0.880 | $4.50 | 5.1× |
| Context window | 128,000 | 200,000 | 36% |
Input and output rates are as published by each provider. Blended and job-cost rows are calculated comparison metrics, not published prices — how they are derived.
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 405B | Sonar Pro | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU | 88% | 86% | Llama 3.1 405B |
| GPQA Diamond | 51% | 60% | Sonar Pro |
| MATH | 73% | 80% | Sonar Pro |
| HumanEval | 89% | 80% | Llama 3.1 405B |
Only suites both models report are listed, so a missing score is never shown as a loss. Figures are provider-published or from public leaderboards and are not independently re-run.
What each model is for
Llama 3.1 405B
Meta · Large
Largest dense Llama. Used as a quality benchmark for open weights, heavy to run, often hosted via Together / DeepInfra / Cerebras.
- Top open-weights quality
- Permissive license
- Strong reasoning
Sonar Pro
Perplexity · Frontier
Web-grounded Perplexity flagship. Returns answers with citations from a live search index.
- Live web search
- Citations included
- Up-to-date answers
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper, Llama 3.1 405B or Sonar Pro?
On blended cost Llama 3.1 405B undercuts Sonar Pro by about 8.3×: $0.800 per million tokens versus $6.60. A single 100K-input, 10K-output job costs $0.088 on Llama 3.1 405B against $0.450 on Sonar Pro. Blended cost weights input at 70% and output at 30%; price your own token split for an exact answer, since the cheaper model on a blended basis is not always cheaper for your workload.
Which performs better, Llama 3.1 405B or Sonar Pro?
On shared benchmarks it is a draw: 4 suites in common and honours even. These are the figures each provider or public leaderboard publishes, not results we re-run, and a benchmark average can hide the specific behaviour your workload depends on.
Which has the larger context window, Llama 3.1 405B or Sonar Pro?
On context, Sonar Pro is the larger at 200,000 tokens versus 128,000. The context window caps everything in a single request: prompt, retrieved documents, conversation history and the model’s own output all share it.
Can I compare Llama 3.1 405B and Sonar Pro on my own numbers?
Yes. Open both in the side-by-side comparison tool to see every field at once, or use the token calculator to price your actual prompt and monthly request volume against each model. Both are free and need no sign-up.
Price it for your own workload
Related matchups
Terms used on this page
Prices and scores are recomputed on every deploy from the catalogue. Prices checked 12 August 2026.