Pre-flight checklist
- This is about the Perplexity API, not the Perplexity app, Computer, Comet, or web UI.
- I have removed API keys, secrets, and private data.
- I have included enough information for someone else to reproduce the issue.
Bug type
- Other API bug
- API docs issue
- Backwards Compatibility
Affected API area
- Agent API
Summary
The Sonar Pro - Perplexity page says:
Sonar Chat Completions is now Agent API. Sonar will be supported until September 27, 2026.
I’m aware that the Migrate from Sonar to the Agent API - Perplexity suggests moving from sonar to preset="fast" and from sonar-pro to preset="low":
But these aren’t 1-1 transitions; we have done benchmarks and have precisely chosen sonar and sonar-pro for their great performances on our specific use cases.
We could do benchmarking for presets, but that’s a time consuming task and even a bit risky as there’s no guarantee that the same “backend” model will be consistently used on your server, so this also adds risks for our production app.
The Agent API Models - Perplexity only shows the perplexity/sonar on the table — no mention to perplexity/sonar-pro (same for other models in the sonar family):
So we’re able to keep force using sonar with model="perplexity/sonar", but don’t have an alternative to sonar-pro on our Tier 4 production app.
Expected behavior
Allow forcefully using model="perplexity/sonar-pro" on the Agents API for a low-risk migration w/ backwards compatibility .
Actual behavior
Docs only mention about migrating from model="sonar-pro" to preset="low", adding risks to migration.