Model comparison

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct vs Sonar

Meta's Llama 3.3 70B Instruct against Perplexity's Sonar: vendor list prices, limits, abilities and the Artificial Analysis indexes side by side - and what OpenSmartRoute does when both are available.

CheaperLlama 3.3 70B Instruct

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct lists at $0.155 per million tokens blended against $1.00 for Sonar - 6.5x less.

Intelligence: levelEven

Intelligence index 8 against 8: within a point of each other.

Longer contextLlama 3.3 70B Instruct

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct reads 131k tokens at once, Sonar 127k.

Abilities differEven

only Llama 3.3 70B Instruct offers tool calls, structured output, open weights; only Sonar offers image input.

NewerSonar

Sonar was released about 2 months later.

Side by side

Vendor list prices per million tokens and published limits; indexes are Artificial Analysis composites (0-100).

Specification	Llama 3.3 70B Instruct	Sonar
Input price / 1M tokens	$0.10	$1.00
Output price / 1M tokens	$0.32	$1.00
Blended (3 in : 1 out)	$0.16	$1.00
Cached input / 1M	-	-
Context window	131K	127K
Max output	16K	114K
Input	text	text, image
Output	text	text
Tool calls
Structured output
Reasoning
Open weights
Intelligence index	8	8
Coding index	12	-
Agentic index	-	-
Released	Dec 6, 2024	Jan 27, 2025
Available on this deployment

What a month costs

List price times tokens for three typical workloads; your mix of input and output decides which model's pricing suits you.

Workload	Llama 3.3 70B Instruct	Sonar	Difference
Support chat20M tokens in, 5M out a month - a help desk answering a few thousand conversations.	$3.60	$25.00	$21.40 less on Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Document summaries100M in, 5M out - long inputs, short answers.	$11.60	$105	$93.40 less on Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Coding assistant60M in, 20M out - a team's editor assistant, output-heavy.	$12.40	$80.00	$67.60 less on Llama 3.3 70B Instruct

What the router does with the pair

The two measure the same on the intelligence index, so the router treats them as peers and lets price, observed latency and your outcomes decide: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct wins on cost, and a few bad outcomes on either move the next requests to the other.

Price a request Playground

yaml

# targets.yaml - both models as routing targets (metadata.model links each to the catalogue entry)
targets:
  - { id: llama-3.3-70b-instruct, kind: llm, metadata: { model: meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b-instruct } }
  - { id: sonar, kind: llm, metadata: { model: perplexity/sonar } }

# rules.yaml - the cheaper model by default, the stronger one when the request is hard
rules:
  - name: simple-requests-stay-cheap
    when: { max_complexity: 0.45 }
    prefer: [llama-3.3-70b-instruct]
    weight: 0.8
  - name: hard-requests-escalate
    when: { min_complexity: 0.45 }
    prefer: [sonar]
    weight: 0.8

Frequently asked

Is Llama 3.3 70B Instruct cheaper than Sonar?: Yes. Llama 3.3 70B Instruct lists at $0.10 in / $0.32 out per million tokens, Sonar at $1.00 in / $1.00 out; blended, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct is the cheaper one.
Which is better, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct or Sonar?: The two measure the same on the intelligence index, so the task, the price and the abilities decide.
Which has the longer context window?: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct - 131K tokens against 127K.
Can I use Llama 3.3 70B Instruct and Sonar together?: Yes. Declare both as targets and OpenSmartRoute picks one per request on quality for the task, price and your rules - the cheaper model for the requests it can answer, the stronger one for the rest - and records why in the trace.

Also compared

Every Meta and Perplexity model, with prices, is on the vendor pages; the rankings show what the router actually picks.

For the business

What it means for which models you pay for.

Catalogue of every vendor
The right model, not the famous one
Price, context, abilities and benchmark indexes side by side, with the model that fits each task named.
The rankings
89% less
Lower cost per request
On the 150-prompt benchmark the router spent 89% less than sending every prompt to the reference model, and the judged quality went up, not down.
Read the benchmark
Per million tokens, every model
Prices you can compare
The catalogue prints input and output prices and what three typical monthly workloads cost on each.
The model catalogue

Which LLM is the cheapest for our workload?: The best-for pages rank the live catalogue per task by the index that measures it, and the router picks the cheapest model that meets your quality rule for each request.
How much can we save on our LLM bill?: On the public benchmark the router saved 89% against sending everything to the reference model. Import last month's provider bill on the bill page and the estimate is computed on your own traffic before you change a line of code.
How often do model prices change?: The catalogue is refreshed from the vendors' price lists; each model page shows the date of its data.

Stop choosing between Llama 3.3 70B Instruct and Sonar. Route to both.

Declare the pair as targets and OpenSmartRoute picks per request - the cheaper one where it holds up, the stronger one where it matters - with the comparison in every trace.

Create a free account Try a request

Free plan, no card. Fifteen thousand decisions a month with the full trace.

Specification

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct

Sonar

Input price / 1M tokens

$0.10

$1.00

Output price / 1M tokens

$0.32

$1.00

Blended (3 in : 1 out)

$0.16

$1.00

Cached input / 1M

Context window

131K

127K

Max output

16K

114K

Input

text

text, image

Output

text

Tool calls

Structured output

Reasoning

Open weights

Intelligence index

Coding index

Agentic index

Released

Dec 6, 2024

Jan 27, 2025

Available on this deployment

Workload

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct

Sonar

Difference

Support chat20M tokens in, 5M out a month - a help desk answering a few thousand conversations.

$3.60

$25.00

$21.40 less on Llama 3.3 70B Instruct

Document summaries100M in, 5M out - long inputs, short answers.

$11.60

$105

$93.40 less on Llama 3.3 70B Instruct

Coding assistant60M in, 20M out - a team's editor assistant, output-heavy.

$12.40

$80.00

$67.60 less on Llama 3.3 70B Instruct

# targets.yaml - both models as routing targets (metadata.model links each to the catalogue entry) targets: - { id: llama-3.3-70b-instruct, kind: llm, metadata: { model: meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b-instruct } } - { id: sonar, kind: llm, metadata: { model: perplexity/sonar } } # rules.yaml - the cheaper model by default, the stronger one when the request is hard rules: - name: simple-requests-stay-cheap when: { max_complexity: 0.45 } prefer: [llama-3.3-70b-instruct] weight: 0.8 - name: hard-requests-escalate when: { min_complexity: 0.45 } prefer: [sonar] weight: 0.8

Frequently asked

Is Llama 3.3 70B Instruct cheaper than Sonar?

Yes. Llama 3.3 70B Instruct lists at $0.10 in / $0.32 out per million tokens, Sonar at $1.00 in / $1.00 out; blended, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct is the cheaper one.

Which is better, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct or Sonar?

The two measure the same on the intelligence index, so the task, the price and the abilities decide.

Which has the longer context window?

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct - 131K tokens against 127K.

Can I use Llama 3.3 70B Instruct and Sonar together?

Yes. Declare both as targets and OpenSmartRoute picks one per request on quality for the task, price and your rules - the cheaper model for the requests it can answer, the stronger one for the rest - and records why in the trace.

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct vs Sonar

Side by side

What a month costs

What the router does with the pair

Frequently asked

Also compared

What it means for which models you pay for.

The right model, not the famous one

Lower cost per request

Prices you can compare

Stop choosing between Llama 3.3 70B Instruct and Sonar. Route to both.

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct vs Sonar

Side by side

What a month costs

What the router does with the pair

Frequently asked

Also compared

What it means for which models you pay for.

The right model, not the famous one

Lower cost per request

Prices you can compare

Stop choosing between Llama 3.3 70B Instruct and Sonar. Route to both.