Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.8 vs Sonar

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 10× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.8 Anthropic

60.7

Rank #13 Confirmed

Sonar Perplexity

38.5

Rank #187 Confirmed

Summary

  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 78.4 to 33.7.
  • Sonar is cheaper at $1 / $1 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.8.
  • Claude Opus 4.8 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.8 and Sonar specifications
Claude Opus 4.8Sonar
ProviderAnthropicPerplexity
Noometry Index60.738.5
Released2026-05-282024-01-01
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M128K
Max output128K4K
Input $ / M tokens$5$1
Output $ / M tokens$25$1
Results tracked657

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 59.9 (#12), Sonar: 35.7 (#221)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Sonar
DeepSWE59%—
FrontierCode46.5%—
LMArena WebDev1556—
SciCode53.5%—
GSO47.1%—
WeirdML82.9%—
LiveBench Coding—35.1%
LMArena Coding1490—
ALE-Bench1,564—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#11), Sonar: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Sonar
APEX-Agents48.9%—
OSWorld 2.020.6%—
Remote Labor Index8.3%—
τ²-bench Banking39.7%—
DeepResearch Bench50.2%—
PostTrainBench33.8%—
GBAEval70.9%—
GDP.pdf24%—
LMArena Search1204—
Vending-Bench 25,787—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 64.7 (#16), Sonar: 21.1 (#227)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Sonar
ARC-AGI-272.1%—
SimpleBench64.8%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark88.8%—
NYT Connections (extended)91.1%—
ARC-AGI-192.5%—
CritPt20.9%—
Chess Puzzles34%—
EnigmaEval23.5%—
EBR-Bench28.6%—
LiveBench Reasoning—46.3%
LMArena Hard Prompts1482—
Mystery Game Puzzles36%—
DTBench94.9%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—37.9%
LMCA57.5%—
Surface Evolver Bench87.5%—
Bench to the Future 30.14—
Epoch Capabilities Index158.21—
ForecastBench59.9—
LiveBench—46.9%

Math Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 78.4 (#13), Sonar: 33.7 (#200)

Knowledge Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#29), Sonar: —

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Sonar
GPQA Diamond91%—
SimpleQA Verified53%—
LMArena Expert1502—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.8: 42.9 (#26), Sonar: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Sonar
LMArena Vision1294—
Blueprint-Bench 214.5%—
Furniture Assembly42.5%—
LMArena Document1475—

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.8: 55.2 (#33), Sonar: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Sonar
LMArena Non-English1450—
LMArena Chinese1507—
LMArena French1481—
LMArena German1472—
LMArena Japanese1440—
LMArena Korean1432—
LMArena Russian1474—
LMArena Spanish1466—

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 77.4 (#24), Sonar: 71.4 (#150)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Sonar
LiveBench Instruction Following—76.2%
LMArena Instruction Following1476—

Long Context Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#35), Sonar: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Sonar
LMArena Longer Query1483—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 72.0 (#16), Sonar: 52.6 (#167)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Sonar
LMArena Text1461—
LMArena Creative Writing1454—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1840—
EQ-Bench 41281—
LMArena Multi-Turn1476—
LiveBench Language—44.1%

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Sonar?

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 10× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Sonar?

Sonar is cheaper. It lists at $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Sonar better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 59.9 versus 35.7 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.8 does, with 1M tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.8 and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.

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