ERNIE 4.5 Pro vs Sonar Pro Reasoning: which model should you choose?
We compared ERNIE 4.5 Pro and Sonar Pro Reasoning on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. ERNIE 4.5 Pro and Sonar Pro Reasoning are effectively tied on the index average; ERNIE 4.5 Pro is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
ERNIE 4.5 Pro
ERNIE 4.5 Pro is a multimodal model from Baidu. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $13.89 per million input tokens and $65.19 per million output tokens, and averages 80.5 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $13.89 / 1M
- Output
- $65.19 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 80.5
- 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 | ERNIE 4.5 Pro | Sonar Pro Reasoning | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $13.89 | $13.94 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $65.19 | $72.76 | A |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 32,768 | 32,768 | Tie |
| Average score | 80.5 | 80.5 | Tie |
| Arena Elo | 1414.3 | 1439.7 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
ERNIE 4.5 Pro wins 6, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 6, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | ERNIE 4.5 Pro | Sonar Pro Reasoning | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 80.3 | 82.6 | 2.3 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| GPQA Diamond | 74.7 | 76.2 | 1.5 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| SWE-bench Verified | 66.5 | 71.7 | 5.2 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| HumanEval | 86.9 | 82.7 | 4.2 | ERNIE 4.5 Pro |
| MATH-500 | 87.2 | 85.1 | 2.1 | ERNIE 4.5 Pro |
| AIME 2025 | 76.3 | 73.7 | 2.6 | ERNIE 4.5 Pro |
| LiveCodeBench | 76.4 | 75.6 | 0.8 | ERNIE 4.5 Pro |
| IFEval | 86.0 | 87.1 | 1.1 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| TruthfulQA | 83.1 | 84.4 | 1.3 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| HellaSwag | 90.2 | 89.9 | 0.3 | ERNIE 4.5 Pro |
| MMMU | 78.4 | 76.1 | 2.3 | ERNIE 4.5 Pro |
| Arena Elo | 1414.3 | 1439.7 | 25.4 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, ERNIE 4.5 Pro costs about $26.71 per million tokens and Sonar Pro Reasoning costs about $28.65. ERNIE 4.5 Pro is roughly 7% cheaper than Sonar Pro Reasoning. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
ERNIE 4.5 Pro has the larger context window at 1,000,000 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, ERNIE 4.5 Pro wins 6, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 6, and 0 are tied. The two models are effectively tied on the index average at 80.5.
The price picture favours ERNIE 4.5 Pro. The context picture favours ERNIE 4.5 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 ERNIE 4.5 Pro; it is cheaper on a blended basis and has the larger context window. Test it on your own traffic before committing.
Choose ERNIE 4.5 Pro if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
Choose Sonar Pro Reasoning if
- The workload needs multi-step reasoning.
FAQ
Is ERNIE 4.5 Pro better than Sonar Pro Reasoning?
The two models are effectively tied on the index average at 80.5. The better choice depends on price, context and your task. ERNIE 4.5 Pro wins 6 benchmarks, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 6.
Which is cheaper, ERNIE 4.5 Pro or Sonar Pro Reasoning?
ERNIE 4.5 Pro is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $26.71 per million tokens, versus $28.65 for Sonar Pro Reasoning.
Which has the larger context window?
ERNIE 4.5 Pro has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Sonar Pro Reasoning has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
ERNIE 4.5 Pro is proprietary; Sonar Pro Reasoning is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with ERNIE 4.5 Pro; it is cheaper on a blended basis and has the larger context window. Test it on your own traffic before committing.