Head-to-head comparison
Sonar (Perplexity) and Reka Flash 3 (Reka) compared on the ModelCap Index, API price, context window, provider availability, weight access and every public benchmark board they share. Figures are the same ones shown on the live rankings; nothing here is a hidden score.
Snapshot as of 3 September 2026
As of 3 September 2026, Sonar holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#200 vs #217); Reka Flash 3 is 5× cheaper per output token ($0.20/1M vs $1.00/1M); Sonar offers the longer context window (127K vs 66K tokens); and Reka Flash 3 ships open weights.
Evidence: 1 public benchmark observation across 1 board · 1 public benchmark observation across 1 board. Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.
Scores are the sources' own published figures for each model's best evaluated configuration; ModelCap never re-runs a benchmark.
Want a different pairing? Open the interactive comparison tool to swap either model for any current ranked language model.
Sonar ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 3 September 2026: #200 against #217. That is a capability ranking built from public benchmark evidence with published uncertainty; whether it is "better" for you also depends on price, context and where you can run it.
Reka Flash 3 is cheaper on output tokens: $0.20/1M against $1.00/1M. Input tokens are $1.00/1M for Sonar and $0.10/1M for Reka Flash 3. Prices are the lowest listed API offer ModelCap observed, in USD per million tokens.
Sonar has the larger context window: 127K tokens against 66K.
The two models do not share a coding benchmark board on ModelCap yet, so no head-to-head coding score is published; the ModelCap Index position is the closest overall signal.
Sonar: API only. Reka Flash 3: Open weights. Open weights mean the checkpoint can be downloaded and self-hosted under its licence; API-only models are available solely through hosted endpoints.
ModelCap currently lists 1 API provider for Sonar and 1 for Reka Flash 3, from the OpenRouter catalogue snapshot the site serves; each model page lists the providers and their prices.
Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 3 September 2026; the page re-renders within a minute of each data refresh, and the ModelCap Index positions are the same ones shown on the live rankings.