GPT-5 Mini vs Sonar Pro Search
Updated October 21, 2026. No benchmark has tested both models yet. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
- Coding
- 34.2
- Overall
- 20.6
- Output $/M
- $2.00
- Coding
- No data
- Overall
- No data
- Output $/M
- $15.00
Decision reading
Only GPT-5 Mini has a coding score, 34.2 on the Vibe Coding Index; Sonar Pro Search has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Compare them on price, context and the boards below.
No benchmark has tested both yet. GPT-5 Mini has results on SWE-bench Verified, SWE-bench Multilingual and LiveCodeBench (Vals AI); Sonar Pro Search has none yet. Compare them on price and context instead.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a AA Intelligence Index result, 20.6.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a GPQA Diamond result, 80.3%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a AIME result, 91.5%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a MMLU Pro result, 82.2%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a Design Arena: websites result, 1125.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
GPT-5 Mini
GPT-5 Mini takes 400K tokens against 200K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
GPT-5 Mini
GPT-5 Mini $0.0013, Sonar Pro Search $0.011 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has the number, $0.08.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- GPT-5 Mini 34.2 from 2 benchmarks, Sonar Pro Search not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- None yet: no category has been tested on both models.
- Widest single gap
- None yet: no benchmark has tested both models.
- Output price
- GPT-5 Mini $2.00 against Sonar Pro Search $15.00 per million output tokens, 7.5x apart.
- Context window
- GPT-5 Mini takes 400K tokens, Sonar Pro Search 200K.
Benchmark by benchmark
Every board either model has a result on, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale. Only one model is measured on each, so no row names a leader.
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index12 boards measured
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Sonar Pro Search | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 59.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 39.7% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 86.6% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 60.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 14.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 83.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| SciCode | 39.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 33.3% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Terminal-Bench | 34.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| WeirdML | 52.7% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1406 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1394 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 26 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards measured
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Sonar Pro Search | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 20.6 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 145.3 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards measured
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Sonar Pro Search | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 71.1% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | -$31 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 37 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index15 boards measured
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Sonar Pro Search | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 80.3% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 78.9% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 82.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 21.5% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 75.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| ARC-AGI | 54.3% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 4.4% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Chess puzzles | 24.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 10.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| VPCT | 40.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1380 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1379 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1383 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1202 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1210 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards measured
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Sonar Pro Search | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 91.5% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MATH 500 (Vals AI) | 94.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | 92.6% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| AA Math Index | 90.7 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 90.7% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 86.7% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 46.7% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 12.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| ProofBench | 9.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MATH level 5 | 97.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1378 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1380 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index14 boards measured
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Sonar Pro Search | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 82.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 81.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 68.5% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 60.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 75.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 66.9% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 96.1% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 43.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 83.7% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 21.6% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1371 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1380 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1375 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1358 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards measured
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Sonar Pro Search | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1125 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1106 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1129 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1130 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1037 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1115 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1091 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1124 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index33 boards measured
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Sonar Pro Search | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 43.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 80.6% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| IFBench | 75.4% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 72.3% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| DTBench | 80.5% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMCA | 34.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 69.4% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | 83.1% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text | 1373 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1357 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1325 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision | 1202 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1379 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1363 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1386 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1366 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1341 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1308 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1386 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1354 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1362 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1378 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1363 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1355 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1344 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1340 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1216 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1214 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1199 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1205 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: captioning | 1217 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1226 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1181 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 13 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
GPT-5 Mini costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
GPT-5 Mini costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
GPT-5 Mini costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | OpenAI GPT-5 Mini | Perplexity Sonar Pro Search |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | OpenAI | Perplexity |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | August 7, 2025 | October 30, 2025 |
| Context window | 400K | 200K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.25 | $3.00 |
| Output $/Mtok | $2.00 | $15.00 |
| Coding index | 34.2 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.08 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is GPT-5 Mini better than Sonar Pro Search for coding?
Only GPT-5 Mini has a coding score, 34.2 on the Vibe Coding Index; Sonar Pro Search has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Compare them on price, context and the boards below.
Which is cheaper, GPT-5 Mini or Sonar Pro Search?
GPT-5 Mini costs $0.25 per million input tokens and $2.00 per million output tokens; Sonar Pro Search costs $3.00 and $15.00. Cost per solved task is known for GPT-5 Mini only.
Which has the bigger context window, GPT-5 Mini or Sonar Pro Search?
GPT-5 Mini, with 400K tokens against 200K.
Has any benchmark tested both GPT-5 Mini and Sonar Pro Search?
No benchmark has tested both yet. GPT-5 Mini has results on SWE-bench Verified, SWE-bench Multilingual and LiveCodeBench (Vals AI); Sonar Pro Search has none yet. Compare them on price and context instead. Data as of October 21, 2026.