Deployment of the prototype node of the SONG project took place in April 2012 at Observatorio del Teide (Canary Islands). Its key instrument (echelle spectrograph) was installed and operational a few weeks later while its 1 m feeding telescope suffered a considerable delay to meet the required specifications. Using a fibre-feed, solar light could be fed to the spectrograph and we carried out a 1-week observing campaign in June 2012 to evaluate its performance for measuring precision radial velocities. In this work we present the first results of this campaign by comparing the sensitivity of the SONG spectrograph with other helioseismology reference instruments (Mark-I and GOLF) when simultaneous data are considered. ; Deployment of the prototype node of the SONG project took place in April 2012 at Observatorio del Teide (Canary Islands). Its key instrument (echelle spectrograph) was installed and operational a few weeks later while its 1 m feeding telescope suffered a considerable delay to meet the required specifications. Using a fibre-feed, solar light could be fed to the spectrograph and we carried out a 1-week observing campaign in June 2012 to evaluate its performance for measuring precision radial velocities. In this work we present the first results of this campaign by comparing the sensitivity of the SONG spectrograph with other helioseismology reference instruments (Mark-I and GOLF) when simultaneous data are considered. © 2013 Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.