Perplexity: Sonar Pro Search API Pricing
Perplexity: Sonar Pro Search costs $3.00 per 1M input tokens and $15.00 per 1M output tokens. Context window: 200K. Prices verified 2026-10-21 · source
Alternatives to consider
Cheapest perplexity model — 83% less per month
Rebuilt daily from our snapshot archive — the chart appears once a model has 5+ snapshots of history.
From our own daily snapshot archive — independent of provider announcements.
Token economics
| Token type | Price | vs base input |
|---|---|---|
| Standard input | $3.00 | — |
| Output | $15.00 | — |
| Web search tool | $18/1k searches | — |
Prompt caching stores repeated context server-side: reads cost far less, but writes carry a one-time premium.
Higher effort = deeper thinking = more reasoning tokens billed as output.
What would Perplexity: Sonar Pro Search cost you per month?
| Workload | Requests/mo | Avg tokens (in/out) | Est. monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light chatbot | 10,000 | 800 / 400 | $84.00 |
| Coding agent | 5,000 | 8,000 / 2,000 | $270.00 |
| RAG pipeline | 30,000 | 4,000 / 500 | $585.00 |
| Doc summarizer | 2,000 | 20,000 / 1,000 | $150.00 |
Estimates use list prices without prompt caching. Caching can cut input cost by up to 90% on repeated context.
About Perplexity: Sonar Pro Search
Exclusively available on the OpenRouter API, Sonar Pro's new Pro Search mode is Perplexity's most advanced agentic search system. It is designed for deeper reasoning and analysis. Pricing is based...
Compare Perplexity: Sonar Pro Search with
- Pro Search vs OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Terra Pro
- Pro Search vs Anthropic: Claude Fable 5
- Pro Search vs Anthropic: Claude Opus 5
- Pro Search vs OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol
Popular head-to-heads — see all on the comparisons index.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Perplexity: Sonar Pro Search cost?
Perplexity: Sonar Pro Search costs $3.00 per 1M input tokens and $15.00 per 1M output tokens. Verified 2026-10-21 — provider source.
What is the context window?
200K tokens, with up to 8K output tokens per response. That's roughly 250 pages of text in a single request.
Does it support prompt caching?
Prompt-caching pricing is not published for this model via OpenRouter.
What's a cheaper alternative?
ScaleDown: Summarize saves about 99% on a typical workload with comparable quality.
Official resources
- Perplexity: Sonar Pro Search on OpenRouter — live endpoint, pricing source of record.
- Artificial Analysis leaderboard → — independent intelligence and performance rankings.
- Shred your current bill — paste a CSV and see if switching saves money.