Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo vs Sonar Pro Turbo: which model should you choose?
We compared Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo and Sonar Pro Turbo on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo has the stronger average benchmark score; Sonar 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 Turbo
Sonar Pro Turbo is a multimodal model from Perplexity. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $13.55 per million input tokens and $57.97 per million output tokens, and averages 79.0 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $13.55 / 1M
- Output
- $57.97 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 79.0
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo | Sonar Pro Turbo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $13.81 | $13.55 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $71.10 | $57.97 | B |
| Context window | 128,000 | 128,000 | Tie |
| Max output | 65,536 | 4,096 | A |
| Average score | 79.4 | 79.0 | A |
| Arena Elo | 1433.0 | 1434.8 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo wins 6, Sonar Pro Turbo wins 6, 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 Turbo | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 80.3 | 81.6 | 1.3 | Sonar Pro Turbo |
| GPQA Diamond | 75.4 | 74.2 | 1.2 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| SWE-bench Verified | 67.7 | 66.3 | 1.4 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| HumanEval | 85.0 | 84.7 | 0.3 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| MATH-500 | 81.4 | 84.1 | 2.7 | Sonar Pro Turbo |
| AIME 2025 | 75.6 | 73.9 | 1.7 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 72.3 | 73.7 | 1.4 | Sonar Pro Turbo |
| IFEval | 88.9 | 84.9 | 4.0 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| TruthfulQA | 80.9 | 81.2 | 0.3 | Sonar Pro Turbo |
| HellaSwag | 88.2 | 89.3 | 1.1 | Sonar Pro Turbo |
| MMMU | 77.6 | 75.2 | 2.4 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| Arena Elo | 1433.0 | 1434.8 | 1.8 | Sonar Pro Turbo |
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 Turbo costs about $24.66. Sonar Pro Turbo is roughly 12% cheaper than Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo. 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 6, Sonar Pro Turbo wins 6, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo leads Sonar Pro Turbo by 0.4 points (79.4 versus 79.0).
The price picture favours Sonar 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 Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo for quality-sensitive work and Sonar 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
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
Choose Sonar Pro Turbo if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
FAQ
Is Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo better than Sonar Pro Turbo?
On the index average, Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo leads Sonar Pro Turbo by 0.4 points (79.4 versus 79.0). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo wins 6 benchmarks, Sonar Pro Turbo wins 6.
Which is cheaper, Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo or Sonar Pro Turbo?
Sonar Pro Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $24.66 per million tokens, versus $28.13 for Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo.
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 Turbo is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo for quality-sensitive work and Sonar Pro Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.