Perplexity Pricing, Features and Alternatives

What does Perplexity do?

Answers a prompt from live web search with cited sources, which suits account research questions such as recent funding, product launches or a company's pricing model.
Sells API access pay-as-you-go with no subscription needed: Sonar at $1 input and $1 output per million tokens plus a $5, $8 or $12 per 1,000 requests fee for low, medium or high search context; Sonar Pro at $3 and $15 plus $6 to $14.
Offers a raw Search API at $5 per 1,000 requests, or $1 per 1,000 with search_type set to fast, for returning ranked web results without a generated answer.
Moved Sonar Chat Completions to the Agent API, which runs presets (fast, low, medium, high, xhigh) or third-party models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI with a web_search tool at $0.0025 per call.
Rate-limits the API by usage tier based on lifetime credit purchases, from Tier 0 at $0 to Tier 5 at $5,000+; the Agent API runs at 1 query per second on Tier 0 and 33 on Tier 4 and above.
Runs inside Clay as a native action, Online AI search with Perplexity AI, billed in Clay credits.

Where does Perplexity fit in a GTM engineering stack?

Perplexity is the live web research step in a GTM engineering stack: it answers a per-account question from current web sources with citations, so qualification and personalisation columns in Clay rest on recent facts.

1Clay builds a target account list from a source such as Apollo, a CRM view or a signal
2A Perplexity column asks one specific question per account, for example recent hiring, funding or product news
3An OpenAI column turns the cited answer into a yes/no qualifier or a first line
4Qualified accounts get contacts and verified emails through Clay's waterfall
5Rows push to Smartlead, Instantly or lemlist, and the research note syncs to HubSpot

See how every layer connects in Clay integrations: how the GTM engineering stack fits together.

How much does Perplexity cost?

Prices as shown on Perplexity's pricing page on 17 October 2026 (USD). Free plan: The Perplexity app has a free plan ($0) with search, citations and limited usage. The API has no free tier: you buy credits pay-as-you-go, and no subscription is required.

Sonar (API)

$1 input / $1 output per 1M tokens, plus $5 / $8 / $12 per 1,000 requests

Pay-as-you-go credits

Request fee depends on search context size: low, medium or high.

Sonar Pro (API)

$3 input / $15 output per 1M tokens, plus $6 / $10 / $14 per 1,000 requests

Pay-as-you-go credits

Request fee by low, medium or high search context.

Sonar Reasoning Pro (API)

$2 input / $8 output per 1M tokens, plus $6 / $10 / $14 per 1,000 requests

Pay-as-you-go credits

Sonar Deep Research (API)

$2 input / $8 output per 1M tokens, plus $2 per 1M citation tokens, $3 per 1M reasoning tokens and $5 per 1,000 search queries

Pay-as-you-go credits

Search API

$5 per 1,000 requests (standard) or $1 per 1,000 requests (fast)

Pay-as-you-go credits

Returns ranked web results without a generated answer.

Agent API

Model token rates plus tool fees, e.g. web_search $0.0025 per call, fetch_url $0.0005 per call

Pay-as-you-go credits

Third-party models billed per 1M tokens at the rates listed on the pricing page, for example openai/gpt-6-luna at $0.10 input and $0.50 output, perplexity/sonar at $0.25 input and $2.50 output.

Pro (app)

$17/month

Billed annually

Deep Research, model selection, higher usage limits, expanded Computer access and a one-time 4,000 bonus credits. Does not include API credits.

Max (app)

$167/month

Billed annually

Maximum Computer usage, 10,000 monthly credits plus 35,000 bonus credits, frontier models, priority access to new features.

Enterprise Pro

$40 per seat/month or $400 per seat/year

Monthly or annual

Enterprise Max

$325 per seat/month or $3,250 per seat/year

Monthly or annual

Perplexity's migration guide says Sonar Chat Completions support ended on 27 September 2026: synchronous and streaming Sonar requests are being reformulated as Agent API requests model by model, and asynchronous Sonar requests are no longer supported. Sonar rates above were still listed on the pricing page when checked. The Pro and Max monthly-billed prices were not shown on the pricing page, only the annual-billing rates. API credits are bought in the API Console and are separate from app (Computer) credits; automatic top-up can refill the balance when it drops below $2.

Who is Perplexity best for?

A good fit if you

GTM engineers who need cited, current web answers per account in Clay, such as "Has this company announced a new office in 2026?", with the source URL to check the answer.
Teams writing personalisation or qualification columns that depend on recent news, where a model without live search would answer from stale training data.
Builders who want an API for research agents outside Clay, in n8n or their own code, with per-request pricing and no seat licence.

Look elsewhere if you

Contact data: Perplexity answers questions from the web and does not return verified work emails or phone numbers.
Teams wanting to use their own Perplexity API key inside Clay: Clay lists its Perplexity action as Clay credits only.
Long-lived integrations that cannot absorb API change: Perplexity ended Sonar Chat Completions support on 27 September 2026 and has changed the models behind its Agent API presets several times in 2026.

Does Perplexity integrate with Clay and your CRM?

Clay: Native Clay integration. Clay lists a Clay-built Perplexity integration, included in all plans, with one action: Online AI search with Perplexity AI, which searches the web (or uses a non-online model) and returns an AI Generated Response. Clay labels it Clay Credits Only, so usage bills to your Clay credits rather than your own Perplexity API key. (source)
Integrations: Perplexity's Agent API follows the Open Responses standard, and Perplexity runs a remote MCP server at api.perplexity.ai/mcp (authenticated with an API key or, for supporting clients, OAuth) whose tools use Agent API presets. Custom remote MCP connectors can be registered per project. Clay has a native Perplexity action; elsewhere you call the API over HTTP from n8n, Make or your own code. (source)
GDPR: Perplexity's API privacy page says it does not use Customer Content to train generative AI models, processes personal data under its Data Processing Addendum, and holds a SOC 2 Type II report. Its sources conflict on retention: the privacy page says Zero Data Retention is not the default and is only for eligible accounts, while the API FAQ says the API has zero day retention of prompt data by default. Neither page states data location; the FAQ points to the Trust Center (trust.perplexity.ai) for DPA and GDPR documentation. (source)

What are the best Perplexity alternatives?

Other automation and AI tools that do the same job in a GTM engineering stack, with their own trade-offs.

Exa

AI-native web search API plus Websets, a tool that builds verified company and people lists from a natural-language description.

Pricing: Free credits; Websets from $49/mo
Free trial: Websets Pro shows a 'Start free trial' option; length not stated.

Enrichment and orchestration tools Data providers Automation and AI tools

OpenAI

Maker of the GPT models: a per-token API used inside Clay and automation tools, plus ChatGPT plans for teams.

Pricing: Pay-as-you-go API; ChatGPT Plus $20/mo
Free trial: None listed

Automation and AI tools

Which GTM stacks use Perplexity?

Perplexity FAQs

Does Perplexity Pro include API access?

Perplexity Pro does not include API credits. Perplexity's help centre says API credits are bought separately, pay-as-you-go, in the API Console, and that no subscription is needed to use the API. App credits for Perplexity Computer are a separate balance.

How much does the Perplexity API cost per request?

The Perplexity Sonar API costs $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens, plus a request fee of $5, $8 or $12 per 1,000 requests depending on search context size. A short research prompt with a short answer is therefore mostly the request fee, roughly half a cent to just over one cent per call before tokens.

Can I use my own Perplexity API key in Clay?

Clay lists its Perplexity action, Online AI search with Perplexity AI, as Clay Credits Only, so it runs on Clay credits rather than your key. To use your own key, call the Perplexity API from a Clay HTTP API column instead.

Is Sonar being discontinued?

Perplexity's migration guide says Sonar Chat Completions support ended on 27 September 2026 and that the Agent API is the replacement. Synchronous and streaming Sonar calls are being reformulated as Agent API requests model by model, while asynchronous Sonar requests are no longer supported. The guide maps Sonar and Sonar Pro to the fast preset.

Does Perplexity train on API data?

Perplexity says it does not use Customer Content sent through the API to train generative AI models. Its own pages disagree on retention: the privacy page says Zero Data Retention is not on by default, while the API FAQ says prompts have zero day retention by default, so confirm terms in the Trust Center before sending personal data.

What are Perplexity API rate limits?

Perplexity sets API rate limits by usage tier, based on lifetime credit purchases: Tier 1 starts at $50, Tier 3 at $500 and Tier 5 at $5,000. The Agent API allows 1 query per second on Tier 0, 8 on Tier 2 and 33 on Tier 4 and 5, while the Search API is fixed at 50 query units per second on every tier.

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Sources

Checked on 17 October 2026.

Pricing, integrations and data policies are checked against Perplexity's own pages. How we research tools.