Doubao 1.5 Pro vs Sonar Pro Reasoning: which model should you choose?
We compared Doubao 1.5 Pro and Sonar Pro Reasoning on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Sonar Pro Reasoning has the stronger average benchmark score; Doubao 1.5 Pro is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Doubao 1.5 Pro
Doubao 1.5 Pro is a multimodal model from ByteDance. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $13.65 per million input tokens and $48.98 per million output tokens, and averages 79.7 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $13.65 / 1M
- Output
- $48.98 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 79.7
- 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 | Sonar Pro Reasoning | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $13.65 | $13.94 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $48.98 | $72.76 | A |
| Context window | 200,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 128,000 | 32,768 | A |
| Average score | 79.7 | 80.5 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1428.3 | 1439.7 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Doubao 1.5 Pro wins 3, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 9, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Doubao 1.5 Pro | Sonar Pro Reasoning | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 82.8 | 82.6 | 0.2 | Doubao 1.5 Pro |
| GPQA Diamond | 73.1 | 76.2 | 3.1 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| SWE-bench Verified | 70.4 | 71.7 | 1.3 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| HumanEval | 82.6 | 82.7 | 0.1 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| MATH-500 | 84.4 | 85.1 | 0.7 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| AIME 2025 | 75.2 | 73.7 | 1.5 | Doubao 1.5 Pro |
| LiveCodeBench | 73.7 | 75.6 | 1.9 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| IFEval | 85.5 | 87.1 | 1.6 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| TruthfulQA | 81.6 | 84.4 | 2.8 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| HellaSwag | 88.9 | 89.9 | 1.0 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| MMMU | 79.0 | 76.1 | 2.9 | Doubao 1.5 Pro |
| Arena Elo | 1428.3 | 1439.7 | 11.4 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Doubao 1.5 Pro costs about $22.48 per million tokens and Sonar Pro Reasoning costs about $28.65. Doubao 1.5 Pro is roughly 22% cheaper than Sonar Pro Reasoning. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Doubao 1.5 Pro has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for Sonar Pro Reasoning. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Doubao 1.5 Pro wins 3, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 9, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Sonar Pro Reasoning leads Doubao 1.5 Pro by 0.8 points (80.5 versus 79.7).
The price picture favours Doubao 1.5 Pro. The context picture favours Doubao 1.5 Pro. 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 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 if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 200,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 128,000-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 better than Sonar Pro Reasoning?
On the index average, Sonar Pro Reasoning leads Doubao 1.5 Pro by 0.8 points (80.5 versus 79.7). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Doubao 1.5 Pro wins 3 benchmarks, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 9.
Which is cheaper, Doubao 1.5 Pro or Sonar Pro Reasoning?
Doubao 1.5 Pro is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $22.48 per million tokens, versus $28.65 for Sonar Pro Reasoning.
Which has the larger context window?
Doubao 1.5 Pro has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens. Sonar Pro Reasoning has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Doubao 1.5 Pro 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 for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.