Grok 4.20 vs Sonar Deep Research
Grok 4.20 costs 3.2x less per output token than Sonar Deep Research ($2.50 vs $8.00 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; no benchmark has tested both models yet.
- Coding
- 33.3
- Overall
- 41.0
- Output $/M
- $2.50
- Coding
- No data
- Overall
- No data
- Output $/M
- $8.00
Grok 4.20 or Sonar Deep Research: which to pick
Only Grok 4.20 has a coding score, 33.3 on the Vibe Coding Index; Sonar Deep Research 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. Grok 4.20 has results on LiveCodeBench (Vals AI), SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) and Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI); Sonar Deep Research 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 Grok 4.20 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 25.7.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a GPQA Diamond result, 88.6%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a AIME result, 96.5%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a MMLU Pro result, 86.3%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1229.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Grok 4.20
Grok 4.20 takes 2M tokens against 128K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Grok 4.20
Grok 4.20 $0.0025, Sonar Deep Research $0.0060 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has the number, $0.72.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Grok 4.20 33.3 from 2 benchmarks, Sonar Deep Research 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
- Grok 4.20 $2.50 against Sonar Deep Research $8.00 per million output tokens, 3.2x apart.
- Context window
- Grok 4.20 takes 2M tokens, Sonar Deep Research 128K.
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 Index8 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Sonar Deep Research | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 84.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 72.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 4.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 0.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 44.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 37.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Terminal-Bench | 57.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| WeirdML | 52.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 31 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Sonar Deep Research | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 25.7 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.1 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Sonar Deep Research | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1144 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1054 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1090 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1052 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | 1089 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: HTML slides | 1180 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 28.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 7.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 13.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 11.7% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 93.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $4,663 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 29 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Sonar Deep Research | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.6% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 83.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 91.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 34.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| ARC-AGI | 89.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 65.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 75.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 15 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index1 board measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Sonar Deep Research | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 96.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Sonar Deep Research | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 86.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 77.7% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 54.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 63.7% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 74.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 45.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 94.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 32.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Sonar Deep Research | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1229 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1199 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1192 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1217 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1193 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1221 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1164 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1174 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Sonar Deep Research | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 38.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 63.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 39.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| IFBench | 81.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 69.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| DTBench | 90.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| LMCA | 38.7% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| CL-bench | 22.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| CL-bench Life | 11.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 37 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
Grok 4.20 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Grok 4.20 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Grok 4.20 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 | SpaceXAI Grok 4.20 | Perplexity Sonar Deep Research |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | xAI | Perplexity |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | March 31, 2026 | March 7, 2025 |
| Context window | 2M | 128K |
| Input $/Mtok | $1.25 | $2.00 |
| Output $/Mtok | $2.50 | $8.00 |
| Coding index | 33.3 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.72 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Grok 4.20 better than Sonar Deep Research for coding?
Only Grok 4.20 has a coding score, 33.3 on the Vibe Coding Index; Sonar Deep Research has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Compare them on price, context and the boards below.
Which is cheaper, Grok 4.20 or Sonar Deep Research?
Grok 4.20 costs $1.25 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Sonar Deep Research costs $2.00 and $8.00. Cost per solved task is known for Grok 4.20 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Grok 4.20 or Sonar Deep Research?
Grok 4.20, with 2M tokens against 128K.
Has any benchmark tested both Grok 4.20 and Sonar Deep Research?
No benchmark has tested both yet. Grok 4.20 has results on LiveCodeBench (Vals AI), SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) and Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI); Sonar Deep Research has none yet. Compare them on price and context instead. Data as of October 21, 2026.