Nova Pro Max vs Sonar Pro Reasoning: which model should you choose?
We compared Nova Pro Max and Sonar Pro Reasoning on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Nova Pro Max has the stronger average benchmark score; Nova Pro Max is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Nova Pro Max
Nova Pro Max is a multimodal model from Amazon. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $14.05 per million input tokens and $71.59 per million output tokens, and averages 81.2 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.05 / 1M
- Output
- $71.59 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 81.2
- 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 | Nova Pro Max | Sonar Pro Reasoning | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.05 | $13.94 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $71.59 | $72.76 | A |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 16,384 | 32,768 | B |
| Average score | 81.2 | 80.5 | A |
| Arena Elo | 1423.2 | 1439.7 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Nova Pro Max 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 | Nova Pro Max | Sonar Pro Reasoning | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.2 | 82.6 | 1.6 | Nova Pro Max |
| GPQA Diamond | 78.3 | 76.2 | 2.1 | Nova Pro Max |
| SWE-bench Verified | 67.4 | 71.7 | 4.3 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| HumanEval | 87.5 | 82.7 | 4.8 | Nova Pro Max |
| MATH-500 | 83.8 | 85.1 | 1.3 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| AIME 2025 | 79.3 | 73.7 | 5.6 | Nova Pro Max |
| LiveCodeBench | 77.0 | 75.6 | 1.4 | Nova Pro Max |
| IFEval | 86.4 | 87.1 | 0.7 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| TruthfulQA | 83.4 | 84.4 | 1.0 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| HellaSwag | 88.9 | 89.9 | 1.0 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
| MMMU | 77.2 | 76.1 | 1.1 | Nova Pro Max |
| Arena Elo | 1423.2 | 1439.7 | 16.5 | Sonar Pro Reasoning |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Nova Pro Max costs about $28.44 per million tokens and Sonar Pro Reasoning costs about $28.65. Nova Pro Max is roughly 1% cheaper than Sonar Pro Reasoning. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Nova Pro Max 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, Nova Pro Max wins 6, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 6, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Nova Pro Max leads Sonar Pro Reasoning by 0.7 points (81.2 versus 80.5).
The price picture favours Nova Pro Max. The context picture favours Nova Pro 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 Nova Pro Max for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Nova Pro Max if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- 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
- You need the larger 32,768-token output limit.
- The workload needs multi-step reasoning.
FAQ
Is Nova Pro Max better than Sonar Pro Reasoning?
On the index average, Nova Pro Max leads Sonar Pro Reasoning by 0.7 points (81.2 versus 80.5). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Nova Pro Max wins 6 benchmarks, Sonar Pro Reasoning wins 6.
Which is cheaper, Nova Pro Max or Sonar Pro Reasoning?
Nova Pro Max is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $28.44 per million tokens, versus $28.65 for Sonar Pro Reasoning.
Which has the larger context window?
Nova Pro Max has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Sonar Pro Reasoning has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Nova Pro Max is proprietary; Sonar Pro Reasoning is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Nova Pro Max for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.