Sonar alternatives
Match · Updated July 2026
The closest alternative to Sonar is GPT-4.1 Nano — comparable intelligence (9.6 vs 9.5); for a cheaper option, GPT-5.6 Luna runs $0.100/M vs $1.00/M; and the best open-weight substitute is Kimi K3.
Closest match
Cheaper alternatives
gpt-5.6-luna
$0.100/M input · 51.2 intel
glm-5.2
$0.966/M input · 51.1 intel
gemini-3.5-flash:batch
$0.750/M input · 50.2 intel
gemini-3.6-flash:batch
$0.750/M input · 50.1 intel
minimax-m3
$0.300/M input · 44.4 intel
minimax-m3:batch
$0.150/M input · 44.4 intel
Smarter alternatives
gpt-4.1-nano
9.6 intel · $0.100/M
qwen-2.5-72b-instruct
9.6 intel · $0.360/M
gpt-4o-2024-08-06
9.6 intel · $2.50/M
deepseek-r1-distill-llama-70b
9.9 intel · $0.800/M
qwen3-vl-30b-a3b-instruct
10.0 intel · $0.150/M
llama-4-scout
10.0 intel · $0.100/M
Open-source alternatives
kimi-k3
57.1 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
glm-5.2
51.1 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
minimax-m3
44.4 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
minimax-m3:batch
44.4 intel · open weights · 524K ctx
deepseek-v4-pro
44.3 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
kimi-k2.6
44.2 intel · open weights · 262K ctx
Frequently asked
What is the best alternative to Sonar?
GPT-4.1 Nano is the closest alternative to Sonar, with an Intelligence Index of 9.6 (Sonar scores 9.5) at $0.100 per million input tokens.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Sonar?
Yes — GPT-5.6 Luna costs $0.100 per million input tokens versus $1.00 for Sonar, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
Is there an open-source alternative to Sonar?
Kimi K3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Sonar — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 57.1 on intelligence.