Command A Max vs Sonar Pro Max: which model should you choose?
We compared Command A Max and Sonar Pro Max on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Sonar Pro Max has the stronger average benchmark score; Sonar Pro Max is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Command A Max
Command A Max is a multimodal model from Cohere. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $14.28 per million input tokens and $70.22 per million output tokens, and averages 79.9 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.28 / 1M
- Output
- $70.22 / 1M
- Context
- 400,000
- Avg score
- 79.9
- Open weights
- No
Sonar Pro Max
Sonar Pro Max is a multimodal model from Perplexity. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $14.01 per million input tokens and $69.33 per million output tokens, and averages 81.1 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.01 / 1M
- Output
- $69.33 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 81.1
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Command A Max | Sonar Pro Max | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.28 | $14.01 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $70.22 | $69.33 | B |
| Context window | 400,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 8,192 | 4,096 | A |
| Average score | 79.9 | 81.1 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1443.7 | 1437.8 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Command A Max wins 4, Sonar Pro Max wins 8, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Command A Max | Sonar Pro Max | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.3 | 83.7 | 0.6 | Command A Max |
| GPQA Diamond | 74.5 | 78.8 | 4.3 | Sonar Pro Max |
| SWE-bench Verified | 69.7 | 71.7 | 2.0 | Sonar Pro Max |
| HumanEval | 83.4 | 85.1 | 1.7 | Sonar Pro Max |
| MATH-500 | 85.7 | 86.2 | 0.5 | Sonar Pro Max |
| AIME 2025 | 77.2 | 74.9 | 2.3 | Command A Max |
| LiveCodeBench | 73.1 | 75.7 | 2.6 | Sonar Pro Max |
| IFEval | 86.7 | 88.3 | 1.6 | Sonar Pro Max |
| TruthfulQA | 82.2 | 82.0 | 0.2 | Command A Max |
| HellaSwag | 87.1 | 88.0 | 0.9 | Sonar Pro Max |
| MMMU | 74.6 | 77.2 | 2.6 | Sonar Pro Max |
| Arena Elo | 1443.7 | 1437.8 | 5.9 | Command A Max |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Command A Max costs about $28.27 per million tokens and Sonar Pro Max costs about $27.84. Sonar Pro Max is roughly 2% cheaper than Command A Max. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Command A Max has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for Sonar Pro Max. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Command A Max wins 4, Sonar Pro Max wins 8, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Sonar Pro Max leads Command A Max by 1.2 points (81.1 versus 79.9).
The price picture favours Sonar Pro Max. The context picture favours Command A Max. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with Sonar Pro Max for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Command A Max if
- You need the larger 400,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 8,192-token output limit.
Choose Sonar Pro Max if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
FAQ
Is Command A Max better than Sonar Pro Max?
On the index average, Sonar Pro Max leads Command A Max by 1.2 points (81.1 versus 79.9). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Command A Max wins 4 benchmarks, Sonar Pro Max wins 8.
Which is cheaper, Command A Max or Sonar Pro Max?
Sonar Pro Max is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $27.84 per million tokens, versus $28.27 for Command A Max.
Which has the larger context window?
Command A Max has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens. Sonar Pro Max has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Command A Max is proprietary; Sonar Pro Max is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Sonar Pro Max for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.