Model comparison
Claude Opus 5.5 vs Sonar
Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 8.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
PerplexitySummary
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 5.5 leads 80.2 to 21.1.
- Sonar is cheaper at $1 / $1 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
- Claude Opus 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 68.6 | 38.5 |
| Released | 2026-09-22 | 2024-01-01 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 128K |
| Max output | 128K | 4K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $4 | $1 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $20 | $1 |
| Results tracked | 44 | 7 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 71.9 (#3), Sonar: 35.7 (#221)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierCode | 54.6% | — |
| CursorBench | 57.8% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1813 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 62.3% | — |
| SciCode | 66.9% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1547 | — |
| MirrorCode | 77.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 2,147 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Opus 5.5: 45.3 (#15), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 73.5% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 30.6% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 9,235 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 80.2 (#3), Sonar: 21.1 (#227)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 93.3% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 88.5% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 98.5% | — |
| CritPt | 31.7% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 71.4% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1535 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 71% | — |
| DTBench | 98.9% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LMCA | 68.2% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 167.33 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |
Math Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 91.8 (#3), Sonar: 33.7 (#200)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 91.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 95% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1506 | — |
| FrontierMath Erdős | 2.9% | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
Claude Opus 5.5: 66.4 (#10), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.6% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 72.2% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1547 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 5.5: 57.8 (#1), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1321 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 51.2% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 83.3% | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Opus 5.5: 59.1 (#2), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1507 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1588 | — |
| LMArena French | 1514 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1520 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1507 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 80.0 (#3), Sonar: 71.4 (#150)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1537 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Opus 5.5: 47.1 (#19), Sonar: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1532 | — |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 78.2 (#3), Sonar: 52.6 (#167)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1515 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1533 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 2050 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1499 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than Sonar?
Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 8.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5.5 or Sonar?
Sonar is cheaper. It lists at $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 5.5 lists at $4 and $20.
Is Claude Opus 5.5 or Sonar better for coding?
Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 71.9 versus 35.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Opus 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5.5 and Sonar share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5.5 has 44 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.