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, plus 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. 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 open-source alternative, exposing four tools to clients including Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code and Claude Desktop. Its Agent API can also connect out to any user-supplied remote MCP server, discover that server's tools when a request starts, and call them during the run. Two public APIs are published, Sonar and the Agent API. Computer runs inside Microsoft 365 across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, and Perplexity licenses proprietary data from PitchBook and Wiley for deeper sourcing. Pricing is in USD and published on the vendor's own pages. Pro is $17 per month when billed annually. Max is $167 per month billed annually. Enterprise Pro seats are $40 per user per month or $400 per user per year, and Enterprise Max seats are $325 per user per month or $3,250 per user per year, and an organization can mix the two. What the $17 tier does not buy matters here. Enterprise seats are the only route to SSO, SCIM, audit logs, configurable retention and the contractual no-training commitment, and enterprise plans are sold through a demo request rather than self-serve checkout. Pro and Max are licensed for personal use only, which the pricing page states directly. Perplexity is not built for offline work, because every query reaches the live web. Teams needing the strongest reasoning for non-research tasks, code generation or creative writing should evaluate Claude ($17/mo billed annually) or ChatGPT ($20/mo). Teams standardized on Microsoft may prefer Microsoft 365 Copilot ($30/mo). 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 customer data is contractually never trained on. Current state Q3 2026: 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. Perplexity holds SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA, plus PCI DSS SAQ A, which sits outside our approved certification list. It is also FedRAMP Certified at Low impact 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. Independent review evidence is the Perplexity profile on G2.