Head-to-head showdown: Grok 4.6 Flagship ($2.00 in / $6.00 out per 1M) vs Perplexity Sonar Deep Research ($2.00 in / $8.00 out per 1M). Grok 4.6 Flagship is 1.3× cheaper across standard token mixes, with 500K vs 128K context windows.
grok-4-6 · xai
sonar-deep-research · perplexity
Benchmark
| Workload Scenario | Grok 4.6 Flagship | Perplexity Sonar Deep Research | Price Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M input tokens (raw text) | $2.00 | $2.00 | — |
| 1M output tokens (generation) | $6.00 | $8.00 | −$2.00 |
| 1M tokens · 70% input / 30% output mix | $3.20 | $3.80 | −$0.60 |
| Standard chat turn (4K in / 800 out, 50% cached) | $0.0098 | $0.0144 | −$0.0046 |
| Monthly scale (10K requests / day) | $2,940.00 | $4,320.00 | −$1,380.00 |
Negative difference = Grok 4.6 Flagship is cheaper. Positive = Perplexity Sonar Deep Research is cheaper.
Scaling Curve
Total cost of a token volume at 70/30 input/output split (uncached). Log-log scale.
Verdict
Perplexity Sonar Deep Research has the cheaper input rate, while Grok 4.6 Flagship has the cheaper output rate. The crossover happens when output makes up about 0% of your total tokens.
Below that share (retrieval, summarization, extraction — lots of context in, little text out) Perplexity Sonar Deep Research is cheaper. Above it (generation, translation, coding — long completions) Grok 4.6 Flagship wins.
FAQ
On input, Perplexity Sonar Deep Research is cheaper ($2.00/M vs $2.00/M). On output, Grok 4.6 Flagship is cheaper ($6.00/M vs $8.00/M). For workloads where more than 0% of tokens are output, the output-cheaper model wins overall.
A chat-style request (4,000 input + 800 output tokens, 50% cached) costs $0.0098 on Grok 4.6 Flagship and $0.0144 on Perplexity Sonar Deep Research — Grok 4.6 Flagship is 1.5× cheaper for that workload.
Grok 4.6 Flagship supports 500,000 tokens (64K max output); Perplexity Sonar Deep Research supports 128,000 (16.4K max output). Grok 4.6 Flagship fits 3.9× more context, which matters for long documents and agents.