Perplexity is an AI answer engine with real-time web search and citations. Compare Free, Pro and Max pricing, features and top alternatives.
Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine that combines large language models with real-time web search to produce direct, conversational answers backed by cited sources, rather than a traditional list of ranked links. Founded in 2022 and based in San Francisco, the company has grown quickly into one of the best-known challengers to traditional search.
Beyond its core search product, Perplexity has expanded into Comet, an agentic AI browser that can complete multi-step tasks, a Sonar developer API for building on top of its search and retrieval technology, and dedicated Enterprise offerings for organizations.
Perplexity's core product generates answers with inline citations so users can verify claims against the original web sources, a key differentiator from typical chatbot interfaces. Pro and Max subscribers can choose between multiple underlying AI models from different providers for a given query.
Additional capabilities include Perplexity Labs and deep research modes that produce longer-form reports, spreadsheets and visualizations from a single prompt, file and image analysis, and the Comet agentic browser for automating multi-step web tasks like research and form-filling.
Perplexity offers a free tier with a limited number of daily Pro searches, alongside a Pro plan at $20 per month (or $200 per year) that unlocks unlimited quick searches and access to multiple frontier AI models. A Max plan at $200 per month adds top-tier reasoning models and extended agentic browser usage for professionals who rely on AI search as core work infrastructure.
For organizations, Perplexity offers Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max plans priced per seat, from roughly $40 to $325 per seat per month, adding admin controls, SSO, SCIM provisioning and audit logs.
Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine that combines large language models with real-time web search to generate cited, conversational answers.
Yes, Perplexity has a free tier with a limited number of daily Pro searches using its default model.
Perplexity Pro costs $20 per month or $200 per year.
Perplexity Max is a $200-per-month tier that adds Perplexity's most advanced reasoning models and extended use of the Comet agentic browser.
Perplexity was founded in 2022 by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho and Andy Konwinski.
Perplexity's valuation was reported around $20 to $22 billion in early 2026 following its most recent funding round.
Comet is Perplexity's AI agentic browser, designed to complete multi-step web tasks such as research and form-filling automatically.
Perplexity is built primarily as a search and answer engine with live citations to web sources, while ChatGPT is a general-purpose conversational assistant that later added search features.