Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo vs Sonar Pro Reasoning: which model should you choose?
We compared Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo and Sonar Pro Reasoning on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Sonar Pro Reasoning has the stronger average benchmark score; Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo
Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo is a multimodal model from ByteDance. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $13.81 per million input tokens and $71.10 per million output tokens, and averages 79.4 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $13.81 / 1M
- Output
- $71.10 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 79.4
- Open weights
- No
Sonar Pro Reasoning
Sonar Pro Reasoning is a multimodal model from Perplexity. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $13.94 per million input tokens and $72.76 per million output tokens, and averages 80.5 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $13.94 / 1M
- Output
- $72.76 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 80.5
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo | Sonar Pro Reasoning | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $13.81 | $13.94 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $71.10 | $72.76 | A |
| Context window | 128,000 | 128,000 | Tie |
| Max output | 65,536 | 32,768 | A |
| Average score | 79.4 | 80.5 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1433.0 | 1439.7 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo wins 4, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 8, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo | Sonar Pro Reasoning | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 80.3 | 82.6 | 2.3 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| GPQA Diamond | 75.4 | 76.2 | 0.8 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| SWE-bench Verified | 67.7 | 71.7 | 4.0 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| HumanEval | 85.0 | 82.7 | 2.3 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| MATH-500 | 81.4 | 85.1 | 3.7 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| AIME 2025 | 75.6 | 73.7 | 1.9 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 72.3 | 75.6 | 3.3 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| IFEval | 88.9 | 87.1 | 1.8 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| TruthfulQA | 80.9 | 84.4 | 3.5 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| HellaSwag | 88.2 | 89.9 | 1.7 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| MMMU | 77.6 | 76.1 | 1.5 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| Arena Elo | 1433.0 | 1439.7 | 6.7 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo costs about $28.13 per million tokens and Sonar Pro Reasoning costs about $28.65. Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo is roughly 2% cheaper than Sonar Pro Reasoning. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Both models list a 128,000-token context window. That is enough for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo wins 4, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 8, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Sonar Pro Reasoning leads Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo by 1.1 points (80.5 versus 79.4).
The price picture favours Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo. The context picture is effectively a tie. 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 Reasoning for quality-sensitive work and Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.
Choose Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
Choose Sonar Pro Reasoning if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- The workload needs multi-step reasoning.
FAQ
Is Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo better than Sonar Pro Reasoning?
On the index average, Sonar Pro Reasoning leads Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo by 1.1 points (80.5 versus 79.4). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo wins 4 benchmarks, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 8.
Which is cheaper, Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo or Sonar Pro Reasoning?
Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $28.13 per million tokens, versus $28.65 for Sonar Pro Reasoning.
Which has the larger context window?
Both models list a 128,000-token context window.
Are these models open weights?
Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo is proprietary; Sonar Pro Reasoning is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Sonar Pro Reasoning for quality-sensitive work and Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.