Perplexity

What is Perplexity?

Perplexity is an AI answer engine: you ask a question in natural language and it searches the live web, reads the results and returns a synthesised, conversational answer with inline citations to its sources. It is one of the most widely used alternatives to a traditional search engine. What earns it a place among agents is its more autonomous surfaces — Deep Research, which runs many searches and compiles a cited report on its own, and Comet, an agentic browser that can carry out multi-step tasks on the web for you. Perplexity was founded in August 2022 by CEO Aravind Srinivas together with Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho and Andy Konwinski, and has since raised well over $1.7B — including a $500M Series E led by Accel (May 2025, $14B valuation), a $200M round that pushed its valuation to $20B (September 2025), and a further Series E-6 close in January 2026 that pushed its valuation to roughly $22.6–23B (reports differ on the precise figure; the amount raised was not publicly disclosed) — making it one of the highest-valued AI startups outside the frontier model labs themselves.

What does Perplexity do?

At its core Perplexity answers questions by orchestrating a web search, retrieving and reading sources, and generating a grounded answer with numbered citations you can click to verify. On paid tiers you choose which frontier model reasons over the results — Perplexity’s own Sonar models plus GPT, Claude, Gemini and, added in 2026, Z.ai’s GLM and Moonshot AI’s Kimi. Deep Research takes a harder question, autonomously runs dozens of searches, reasons across the material and writes a longer, structured report with sources — the agentic research workflow that made the ‘deep research’ pattern mainstream. Comet, its browser, goes a step further: an in-browser agent that can navigate sites, fill forms and complete multi-step tasks on your behalf. For developers, the Sonar API exposes the same web-grounded answering and search as a usage-based endpoint you can build on. It is available on the web, mobile apps and the Comet browser, with a free tier and paid Pro, Max and Enterprise plans. In March 2026 Perplexity extended this into the workplace with Computer for Enterprise, which lets its agents act directly inside business systems like Snowflake, Salesforce and HubSpot rather than just answering questions about them; Perplexity says internal testing against benchmarks used by McKinsey, Harvard, MIT and Boston Consulting Group found it completed the equivalent of 3.25 years of research work in four weeks across more than 16,000 test queries, an estimated $1.6M in labor-cost savings.

Key features

• Cited answers: Every answer is generated from live web sources with inline, clickable citations so you can verify each claim.
• Deep Research: An autonomous mode that runs many searches, reasons across sources and compiles a longer, cited research report on its own.
• Comet agentic browser: A browser with a built-in agent that navigates sites, fills forms and completes multi-step tasks for you.
• Per-query model choice: Paid tiers let you route a query to Perplexity’s Sonar models or to GPT, Claude, Gemini, GLM (Z.ai) and Kimi (Moonshot AI).
• Sonar API: A usage-based developer API for web-grounded answers and raw ranked search results.
• Computer for Enterprise: Launched March 2026: lets Perplexity’s agents act inside business systems like Snowflake, Salesforce and HubSpot, not just answer questions about them.

What are Perplexity's use cases?

• Fast, sourced answers: A professional replaces a string of search queries with one question and gets a synthesised answer plus citations to check.
• Autonomous research briefs: An analyst asks Deep Research a broad question and receives a structured, cited report compiled from dozens of sources.
• Hands-off web tasks: A user asks Comet to gather information across several sites or complete a multi-step task in the browser.

What does Perplexity integrate with?

• Model providers — Sonar, OpenAI (GPT), Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), Z.ai (GLM), Moonshot AI (Kimi)
• Sonar API for developers (usage-based)
• Comet browser (desktop + mobile) and native mobile apps
• Enterprise — SSO plus connectors to files and apps
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) — an official Perplexity MCP server exposes its search/reasoning API, plus local MCP client support in the Mac app

Why use Perplexity?

• The most polished answer-with-citations experience, spanning web, mobile and a dedicated browser.
• Deep Research turns a question into an autonomous, cited research report without manual source-gathering.
• Paid tiers let you pick the underlying model — Sonar, GPT, Claude, Gemini, GLM or Kimi — per query.
• A usage-based Sonar API lets developers build web-grounded answering into their own apps.

Pros & cons

Perplexity pricing

• FreeFree
• Pro$20 / /month
• Max$200 / /month
• Enterprise Pro$40 / /seat/month
• Enterprise Max$325 / /seat/month

See current pricing on perplexity.ai ↗Compare Perplexity alternatives →

Perplexity review

Perplexity is the most refined AI answer engine available, and calling it an ‘agent’ is fair only because of the layers it has added on top: Deep Research, which autonomously compiles a cited report, and Comet, a browser whose built-in agent can act on the web for you. For everyday sourced answers it is hard to beat, and per-query model choice across Sonar, GPT, Claude, Gemini and now GLM and Kimi means you are not tied to one model’s weaknesses. The honest caveats are that it is still, at heart, a question-answering tool rather than a general workflow agent, and that like any LLM search product it can occasionally hallucinate or cite a source that doesn’t quite back the claim — so verification still matters. The best agentic pieces also live on the pricier Max and Enterprise tiers. Pick Perplexity if you want first-class sourced answers plus an autonomous research mode and an agentic browser in one place; skip it if you need a self-hosted or fully programmable task agent.

An answer engine first — but Deep Research and the Comet browser make it one of the most useful agentic research tools you can actually buy today.

Frequently asked questions