Grok 4.5 vs Sonar
Updated October 21, 2026. 3 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
vs boards won of 3 shared
Decision reading
Only Grok 4.5 has a coding score, 58.6 on the Vibe Coding Index; Sonar has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Sonar has the edge where output tokens cost 6.0x less.
Model AGrok 4.5xAI58.6/1006 independent benchmarks$0.62 per solved taskModel BSonarPerplexityNot benchmarkedNo coding benchmarkNo cost per solved task
- Shared results
- 3
- Grok 4.5 only
- 117
- Sonar only
- 2
- Like-for-like categories
- 2 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
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 4.5 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5 leads, 38.8 against 7.7.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Grok 4.5 has a AA Agentic Index result, 41.2.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Grok 4.5 has a GPQA Diamond result, 92.9%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Grok 4.5 has a MMLU Pro result, 89.2%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Grok 4.5 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1281.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5 takes 500K tokens against 127K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Sonar
Grok 4.5 $0.0050, Sonar $0.0015 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Grok 4.5 has the number, $0.62.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Grok 4.5 58.6 from 6 benchmarks, Sonar not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Reasoning, 41.9 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run): Grok 4.5 93.1% against Sonar 47.1%, 46.0 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Grok 4.5 $6.00 against Sonar $1.00 per million output tokens, 6.0x apart.
- Context window
- Grok 4.5 takes 500K tokens, Sonar 127K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Grok 4.5 | Bars | Sonar | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 3 | 0 |
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index23 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 94.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1553 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| AA Coding Index | 72.4 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 87.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 86.6% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 8.6% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 69.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 36.6% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 0.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | 40.6% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 67.8% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | 66.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | 71.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 29.5% | Only Sonar measured |
| SciCode | 55.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| FrontierCode | 42.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| WeirdML | 46.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| ALE-Bench | 1309.3 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1474 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1471 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1556 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1567 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1562 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 15 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 38.8 | 7.7 | Grok 4.5 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 154.1 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index22 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 41.2 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1218 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1249 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1221 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1242 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | 1229 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building games | 1236 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: HTML slides | 1204 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | 1233 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench research | 85.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench browser | 44.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 27.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| SREBench (Vals AI) | 0.8% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 48.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 24.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 38.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 52.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Time Horizon Index (Vals AI) | 6.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| APEX-Agents | 56.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| PostTrainBench | 23.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $3,887 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Search | 1216 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 17 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 92.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | 87.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 61.8% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 93.1% | 47.1% | Grok 4.5 |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 42.7% | 4.9% | Grok 4.5 |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 93.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| ARC-AGI | 87.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 52.6% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| SimpleBench | 70.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 35.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1462 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1465 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1464 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1304 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1295 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | 97.8% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 57.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 24.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| ProofBench | 31.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1460 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1482 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 89.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 86.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 67.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 71.7% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 61.8% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 43.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 68.9% | Only Sonar measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 48.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1464 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1440 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1463 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1441 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1281 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1279 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1263 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1266 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1257 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1275 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1215 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1257 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench design | 78.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index33 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench data analysis | 73.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 35.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 86.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 63.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 79.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| DTBench | 96.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMCA | 45.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 74.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Furniture assembly | 22.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1448 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1445 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1442 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision | 1287 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1453 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1440 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1495 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1448 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1430 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1406 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1457 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1451 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1449 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1432 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1456 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1462 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1445 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1434 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1285 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1345 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1293 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1276 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1293 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Document | 1452 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 13 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 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 4.5$0.0050Fits in one request
Sonar$0.0015Fits in one request
Sonar costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Grok 4.5$0.118Fits in one request
Sonar$0.053Fits in one request
Sonar costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Grok 4.5$0.460Fits in one request
Sonar$0.210Exceeds the context window
Sonar 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 4.5 | Perplexity Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | xAI | Perplexity |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | July 8, 2026 | January 27, 2025 |
| Context window | 500K | 127K |
| Input $/Mtok | $2.00 | $1.00 |
| Output $/Mtok | $6.00 | $1.00 |
| Coding index | 58.6 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 6 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.62 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Grok 4.5 better than Sonar for coding?
Only Grok 4.5 has a coding score, 58.6 on the Vibe Coding Index; Sonar has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Sonar has the edge where output tokens cost 6.0x less.
Which is cheaper, Grok 4.5 or Sonar?
Grok 4.5 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $6.00 per million output tokens; Sonar costs $1.00 and $1.00. Cost per solved task is known for Grok 4.5 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Grok 4.5 or Sonar?
Grok 4.5, with 500K tokens against 127K.
How many benchmarks is the Grok 4.5 vs Sonar comparison based on?
3 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Grok 4.5's coding index rests on 6 independent benchmarks and Sonar's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.