We use cookies. Cookies and browser storage keep you signed in and remember your preferences. With your permission we also measure how the site is used. You can any time. See our cookie policy.

New here? See how it works A 1-minute tour of the playground, models and your API key.

o3 vs Sonar Reasoning Pro: API price, context & features · api14

OpenAI: o3 vs Perplexity: Sonar Reasoning Pro

A side-by-side comparison of OpenAI: o3 ($7.00 / 1M tokens) and Perplexity: Sonar Reasoning Pro ($7.00 / 1M tokens) using current USD prices and capabilities from the api14 catalog. Both run through the same OpenAI-compatible API.

Specifications

	OpenAI: o3	Perplexity: Sonar Reasoning Pro
Provider	OpenAI	Perplexity
Input	$7.00 / 1M tokens	$7.00 / 1M tokens
Output	$28.00 / 1M tokens	$28.00 / 1M tokens
Cache read	$1.75 / 1M tokens	-
Web search	$35.00 / 1K searches	$17.50 / 1K searches
Context window	200,000	128,000
Max output	100,000	115,200
Input	image, text, file	text, image
Output	text	text
Tool calling
Structured output
Reasoning control
Added	Apr 16, 2025	Mar 7, 2025

Key differences

Both have about the same input price.
OpenAI: o3 reads 1.6× more context (200,000 tokens).
Only OpenAI: o3 supports tool calling.
Only OpenAI: o3 supports structured JSON output.
A request with 1,000 input and 500 output tokens costs $0.02 with OpenAI: o3 and $0.02 with Perplexity: Sonar Reasoning Pro.

In depth

OpenAI: o3 is a text model from OpenAI, released on 2025-04-16. Perplexity: Sonar Reasoning Pro is a text model from Perplexity, released on 2025-03-07. Both are reasoning-capable text generators that return text output, and on api14 they sit in the same text category, so the choice between them comes down to context size, input types and the parameters each one accepts rather than to a difference in kind.

The clearest split is context window. o3 takes up to 200,000 tokens, while Sonar Reasoning Pro takes up to 128,000, so o3 is the larger of the two when you need to fit long documents, big diffs or extended transcripts into a single call. o3 also accepts image, text and file inputs, whereas Sonar Reasoning Pro accepts text and image only, which means file input is an o3-only capability. On tooling, o3 supports tools, tool choice and structured outputs, and Sonar Reasoning Pro does not list those, so anything that depends on function calling or a strict response schema points at o3. Sonar Reasoning Pro instead exposes the sampling controls (temperature, top p, top k, frequency and presence penalties) plus web search options, which o3 does not list. Reasoning support itself is not a meaningful differentiator here, since both sides expose reasoning and include reasoning parameters. On price, the two are about the same for input and about the same for output, so cost is not the deciding factor.

For practical work, reach for o3 when the task is long-context analysis, when you need to pass a file alongside the prompt, or when the call has to drive tools or return structured output. That covers codebase review, document extraction into a fixed schema, and agent style loops where the model calls functions. Reach for Sonar Reasoning Pro when the task is web grounded research, when you want to tune sampling behaviour directly with temperature or the penalty parameters, or when you want to pass web search options through the request. Its 128,000 token window is still generous for ordinary prompts and retrieved passages.

Calling either model through api14 works the same way, because the gateway is OpenAI compatible. You point your existing client at the api14 base URL, send your key, and set the model field. Switching between the two is a one line change: use "openai/o3" or "perplexity/sonar-reasoning-pro" as the model id. Your messages array, streaming setup and response parsing stay as they are. The one thing to watch is parameters: if you send temperature or top p to o3, or tools and structured outputs to Sonar Reasoning Pro, expect those fields to be ignored or rejected, so keep per model request configs rather than assuming one payload fits both.

There are still cases where Sonar Reasoning Pro is the better pick even though o3 has the bigger window and the tooling. If your task depends on live web results, the web search options it supports are the reason to choose it, and o3 does not list them. Likewise, if you need fine control over sampling through temperature, top k or the penalty parameters, that control lives on the Perplexity side. For a straightforward research question where you want search plus reasoning in one call, Sonar Reasoning Pro is the natural fit, and o3 remains the pick when context length, file input or structured tool use is what the job actually needs.

Switch with one string

Both models use the same endpoint and request shape. Change the model value from "openai/o3" to "perplexity/sonar-reasoning-pro" and prompts, streaming and tools keep working.

OpenAI: o3 details & playground →Perplexity: Sonar Reasoning Pro details & playground →

import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: "https://api14.com/api/v1",
  apiKey: process.env.API14_API_KEY,
});

const result = await client.chat.completions.create({
  "model": "perplexity/sonar-reasoning-pro",
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "Explain vector databases in two sentences."
    }
  ]
});
console.log(result.choices[0].message.content);

OpenAI: o3 vs Perplexity: Sonar Reasoning Pro

Specifications

Key differences

In depth

Switch with one string

More comparisons