Perplexity/operational
Perplexity: Sonar
Sonar is lightweight, affordable, fast, and simple to use — now featuring citations and the ability to customize sources. It is designed for companies seeking to integrate lightweight question-and-answer features...
127K
Context window
tokens
114K
Max output
tokens per reply
113ms
Time to first token
p50, EU region
$1.00
Output price
per 1M tokens
Fit
Where this model earns its place
vision
Image input — screenshots, scanned documents, charts, and photographed forms, without a separate OCR step.
Data handling
Requests are processed in the EU. Prompts are not used for training, and logs follow the retention period in your contract — zero-retention is available on request.
Specifications
Model
- Model ID
- perplexity/sonar
- Provider
- Perplexity
- Context length
- 127K
- Max output
- 114K
- Modality
- text + image
- Licence
- Proprietary
Commercial
- Input
- $1.00
- Output
- $1.00
- Cached input
- —
- Deployment
- serverless
- Availability
- operational
- Last updated
- 2026-10-26
Cost
What a month actually costs
| Workload | Input tokens | Output tokens | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prototype | 1.0M | 250K | $1.25 |
| Production | 50.0M | 12.0M | $62.00 |
| At scale | 500.0M | 120.0M | $620.00 |
Illustrative volumes at list price, excluding cached-input discounts and any committed-use agreement. Your invoice shows the same rates, itemised per key.
Cheaper by caching
API
Same SDK, different base URL
cURL
curl https://api.itciphtech.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $CIPHER_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "perplexity/sonar",
"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
}'TypeScript
import OpenAI from "openai";
const client = new OpenAI({
baseURL: "https://api.itciphtech.com/v1",
apiKey: process.env.CIPHER_API_KEY,
});
const res = await client.chat.completions.create({
model: "perplexity/sonar",
messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello!" }],
});Alternatives
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Need this model on dedicated hardware?
Run it single-tenant, inside your own network boundary, with the operations handled by us.