Sonar vs MiniMax M2
Side-by-side specs, pricing and capabilities. Both models run on Clade under one subscription, so you can switch between them in the same conversation.
Sonar comes from Perplexity and MiniMax M2 from MiniMax. The practical difference for most people is context, price, and which input types each one accepts.
MiniMax M2 holds more in a single conversation — 197K tokens against 128K — which matters for long documents and large codebases.
MiniMax M2 is the cheaper of the two on input tokens at $0.30 / 1M tokens.
| Specification | Sonar | MiniMax M2 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Perplexity | MiniMax |
| Model ID | sonar | MiniMax-M2 |
| Context window | 128K | 197K |
| Max output | — | 10K |
| Input price | $1.00 / 1M tokens | $0.30 / 1M tokens |
| Output price | $1.00 / 1M tokens | $1.00 / 1M tokens |
| Knowledge cutoff | — | — |
| Input types | text, image, file | text, image, file |
| Output types | text | text |
| Plan | Free | Free |
Which should you use?
Pick MiniMax M2 when…
- You need the larger context window — 197K against 128K.
- Cost matters: input runs at $0.30 / 1M tokens versus $1.00 / 1M tokens.
- You want longer single responses — up to 10K output tokens.
Related comparisons
Try both on Clade
You do not have to choose. One Clade subscription gives you Sonar, MiniMax M2, and every other model on the platform.