Sonar vs GPT-4o mini: token pricing & cost compared (July 2026)
How Sonar (Perplexity) and GPT-4o mini (OpenAI) actually compare on price — input, output, and total monthly cost at the MAU you care about. Updated against live OpenRouter pricing.
Perplexity
Sonar
- Input
- $1.00 / 1M tokens
- Output
- $1.00 / 1M tokens
- Output / Input ratio
- 1.0×
- Context window
- 127.072K
OpenAI
GPT-4o mini
- Input
- $0.15 / 1M tokens
- Output
- $0.60 / 1M tokens
- Output / Input ratio
- 4.0×
- Context window
- 128K
The short answer
GPT-4o mini is cheaper across the board for typical workloads.
Token pricing side-by-side
- Sonar
- GPT-4o mini
Cost at your usage
Sonar
Per call
$0.00100
Per user / mo
$0.1000
Total / mo
$100
GPT-4o mini
Per call
$0.00037
Per user / mo
$0.0375
Total / mo
$37
Total monthly bill across MAU
- Sonar
- GPT-4o mini
Same usage profile applied to both models; only the per-token price differs.
Run this against your real numbers
The mini-calculator above is a preview. Use the full tools to model power-user blast radius, gross margin, and 12-month spend forecasts.
Other comparisons
Comparing Sonar vs GPT-4o mini on price alone never tells the whole story — output-token weighting, context length, and your usage profile change the answer dramatically. Use the calculators below for the full picture.
Related tools: All comparisons · Cost Per User Calculator · How to calculate LLM cost per user