Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI is an answer engine that combines large language models with live web retrieval and cites every claim inline. Rather than returning links, it synthesizes across sources and reasons over multiple retrieval steps for harder questions. The platform includes Perplexity Computer, an autonomous agent available on all paid plans that can also be started by email and, for Pro and Max subscribers with a supported NVIDIA GPU, run locally as Portable Computer. It also offers Personal Computer for local file and application tasks, the Comet browser, and Deep Research, which produces reports, spreadsheets, dashboards and websites from a single prompt. Effort Mode, added on 21 September 2026, lets personal-account users on the web choose Light, Standard, High or Ultra effort while Perplexity picks the model and reasoning level. Best fit: researchers, analysts and consultants who want cited answers quickly and are willing to work inside Perplexity's own surfaces.

Perplexity both publishes and consumes MCP. It hosts a remote Model Context Protocol server at api.perplexity.ai/mcp, with a local alternative, exposing four tools for search, answers, research and reasoning to clients including Claude Code and Cursor, and a separate Computer MCP server that lets an MCP client hand multi-step tasks to Perplexity Computer. Its Agent API can also connect out to user-supplied remote MCP servers, discover their tools when a request starts, and call them during the run. The Agent API is now the default developer API alongside Search, Embeddings and Router APIs, and Perplexity ended support for the older Sonar Chat Completions API on September 27, 2026, with synchronous and streaming Sonar requests now being reformulated as Agent API requests. Computer runs inside Microsoft 365 across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, and Perplexity sources premium data from partners including PitchBook, Statista and Wiley.

Pricing is in USD and published on the vendor's own pages. Pro is $17 per month billed annually or $20 billed monthly, and Max is $167 per month billed annually or $200 billed monthly, and both are licensed for personal use only, which the pricing page states directly, and section 5.1 of the terms sets the same personal, non-commercial limit with no carve-out for Free. Enterprise Pro costs $34 per seat per month billed annually and adds Computer with 500 monthly credits per seat, a guaranteed no-training commitment, SSO and premium source citations. Enterprise Max costs $271 per seat per month billed annually and adds 15,000 monthly Computer credits per seat and SCIM, audit logs and data retention settings. An organization can mix the two seat types, both can be started self-serve, and a custom-priced tier adds role-based access control, a custom enterprise domain and volume discounts through sales.

Perplexity is best for researchers, analysts and consultants who want fast, cited answers from the live web during daily work, and for developers who want to feed Perplexity search into other AI tools. Teams that want a general assistant centred on writing, coding and office work rather than on search-led research should consider Claude or ChatGPT. Researchers who need answers drawn from peer-reviewed literature should consider Elicit or Consensus, and organizations that want an assistant licensed and administered through Microsoft 365 should consider Microsoft 365 Copilot. Buyers handling sensitive material should note that consumer searches are used to improve Perplexity's models by default, with an opt-out in account settings, while Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max data is not used for training.

Current state Q4 2026: Automations, which run Computer work on a schedule or when events occur in connected apps, and inline visualizations arrived on 5 October 2026. On 19 October Perplexity added an Ultrafast speed setting for Max subscribers and the Decisions API, which classifies and scores content with probabilities and ships with open model weights. Earlier, Computer reached Microsoft 365 including Teams on 28 May 2026, and Personal Computer reached all Mac users on 10 May 2026. Shared workspaces, Personal Computer for Windows and a Model Council mode arrived on 4 August 2026, Computer in Email followed on 24 August, and Effort Mode, a Skills Marketplace and Portable Computer arrived on 21 September. Perplexity lists SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR and PCI DSS for its Enterprise plans, and PCI DSS sits outside our approved certification list. It is also FedRAMP Certified at Class B (Low) through the FedRAMP 20x pathway, authorized 1 February 2026 and scoped to Perplexity Enterprise and the API Platform rather than to consumer plans. More than 50,000 organizations use Perplexity Enterprise, and named customers include Latham and Watkins, Gunderson Dettmer, Bridgewater, PayPal, AlixPartners, Montana DNRC and Woven Health Collective.