Grok 4.5 vs Sonar Deep Research
Grok 4.5 costs 1.3x less per output token than Sonar Deep Research ($6.00 vs $8.00 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; no benchmark has tested both models yet.
Grok 4.5xAI
- Coding
- 58.6
- Overall
- 38.8
- Output $/M
- $6.00
Sonar Deep ResearchPerplexity
- Coding
- No data
- Overall
- No data
- Output $/M
- $8.00
vs $6.00 vs $8.00 per 1M output tokens. Grok 4.5 is 1.3x cheaper.
Grok 4.5 or Sonar Deep Research: which to pick
Only Grok 4.5 has a coding score, 58.6 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.
Model AGrok 4.5xAI58.6/1006 independent benchmarks$0.62 per solved taskModel BSonar Deep ResearchPerplexityNot benchmarkedNo coding benchmarkNo cost per solved task
No benchmark has tested both yet. Grok 4.5 has results on LiveBench coding, LMArena WebDev and AA Coding Index; 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 4.5 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Grok 4.5 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 38.8.
Directional only
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 128K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5 $0.0050, Sonar Deep Research $0.0060 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 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 4.5 $6.00 against Sonar Deep Research $8.00 per million output tokens, 1.3x apart.
- Context window
- Grok 4.5 takes 500K 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 Index22 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar Deep Research | 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 |
| 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 16 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar Deep Research | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 38.8 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| 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 measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar Deep Research | 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 | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index15 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar Deep Research | 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% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 42.7% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| 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 measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar Deep Research | 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 index11 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar Deep Research | 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 |
| 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 6 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar Deep Research | 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 measured
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Sonar Deep Research | 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 | |||
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 Deep Research$0.0060Fits in one request
Grok 4.5 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Grok 4.5$0.118Fits in one request
Sonar Deep Research$0.124Fits in one request
Grok 4.5 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Grok 4.5$0.460Fits in one request
Sonar Deep Research$0.480Exceeds the context window
Grok 4.5 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 Deep Research |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | xAI | Perplexity |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | July 8, 2026 | March 7, 2025 |
| Context window | 500K | 128K |
| Input $/Mtok | $2.00 | $2.00 |
| Output $/Mtok | $6.00 | $8.00 |
| 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 Deep Research for coding?
Only Grok 4.5 has a coding score, 58.6 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 4.5 or Sonar Deep Research?
Grok 4.5 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $6.00 per million output tokens; Sonar Deep Research costs $2.00 and $8.00. Cost per solved task is known for Grok 4.5 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Grok 4.5 or Sonar Deep Research?
Grok 4.5, with 500K tokens against 128K.
Has any benchmark tested both Grok 4.5 and Sonar Deep Research?
No benchmark has tested both yet. Grok 4.5 has results on LiveBench coding, LMArena WebDev and AA Coding Index; Sonar Deep Research has none yet. Compare them on price and context instead. Data as of October 21, 2026.