Perplexity
Agent API, Router API, Search API, Embeddings API — Sonar deprecated Sept 27, 2026
Perplexity has restructured its API platform in 2026. Sonar Chat Completions is now the Agent API, which provides access to third-party models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Z.AI, Moonshot AI, NVIDIA) at direct provider rates with no markup. The Router API routes requests across models with per-token billing. The Search API provides real-time web retrieval billed per request. The Embeddings API offers pplx-embed-v1 models. Sonar is deprecated September 27, 2026. Check docs.perplexity.ai/docs/getting-started/pricing for current rates.
An API platform combining real-time web search, multi-provider model routing (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI at direct rates), and purpose-built research tools under one key.
- Agent API: access OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Z.AI, Moonshot AI, NVIDIA at direct provider rates
- Search API: real-time web retrieval with advanced filtering
- Router API: intelligent model routing with per-token billing at model rates
- Embeddings API: pplx-embed-v1 models for semantic search and RAG
- Agent API tools: web_search, fetch_url, people_search, sandbox
- Sonar Deep Research for multi-step research with citations
- Sonar deprecated Sept 27, 2026 — migration required
- Agent API is a pass-through — no proprietary frontier model at this tier
- No vision or multimodal support on Sonar models
Perplexity Models
| Model | Modality | Tier | Price | Cached /1M | TTFT | Throughput | Context | Intel. | Caps | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
sonar Sonar | Chat | efficient | $1.00/ $1.00 in / out per 1M EST Jul 2026 | — | 400ms | 80 t/s | 128K | 70 | ||
sonar-reasoning Sonar Reasoning | Chat | advanced | $1.00/ $5.00 in / out per 1M EST Jul 2026 | — | 700ms | 45 t/s | 128K | 76 | ||
sonar-reasoning-pro Sonar Reasoning | Chat | advanced | $2.00/ $8.00 in / out per 1M EST Jul 2026 | — | 900ms | 35 t/s | 128K | 80 | ||
sonar-deep-research Sonar | Chat | frontier | $2.00/ $8.00 in / out per 1M EST Jul 2026 | — | 2.0s | 20 t/s | 128K | 82 | ||
sonar-pro Sonar | Chat | frontier | $3.00/ $15.00 in / out per 1M EST Jul 2026 | — | 600ms | 50 t/s | 200K | 78 |
Perplexity — Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
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Full comparison tablePerplexity LLM pricing overview
Perplexity is a proprietary AI lab that develops and hosts its own large language models. Perplexity has restructured its API platform in 2026. Sonar Chat Completions is now the Agent API, which provides access to third-party models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Z.AI, Moonshot AI, NVIDIA) at direct provider rates with no markup. The Router API routes requests across models with per-token billing. The Search API provides real-time web retrieval billed per request. The Embeddings API offers pplx-embed-v1 models. Sonar is deprecated September 27, 2026. Check docs.perplexity.ai/docs/getting-started/pricing for current rates. Common use cases include Research, Real-time data, Fact-checking, News summarisation. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, founded 2022. All models are accessible via a REST API compatible with standard OpenAI-style request formats, enabling drop-in integration with most LLM frameworks and orchestration tools.
Perplexity vs other LLM providers
Perplexity competes with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, Together AI, Mistral, Cohere, and other inference API providers across dimensions of price, throughput, latency, context window, and model intelligence. An API platform combining real-time web search, multi-provider model routing (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI at direct rates), and purpose-built research tools under one key. Use the LLM provider comparison tool to see Perplexity token pricing, latency, and throughput side-by-side with any other provider. The full LLM pricing table shows all providers ranked by input token cost, output token cost, and throughput in a single sortable view.
Why choose Perplexity?
Perplexity stands out because: An API platform combining real-time web search, multi-provider model routing (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI at direct rates), and purpose-built research tools under one key.. The API currently offers 5 models, spanning 2 frontier, 2 advanced, 1 efficient tiers. For teams running high-volume inference workloads, prompt caching and batch API endpoints can reduce effective input token costs by 50–90% — check the context window cost guide for a full breakdown of caching economics.
Understanding Perplexity token pricing
Perplexity charges separately for input (prompt) and output (completion) tokens, priced per 1M tokens in USD. Output tokens are typically 3–5× more expensive than input tokens due to the compute cost of autoregressive generation. The cheapest {meta.name} input rate is currently $1.00/1M tokens. Prices shown are sourced from Perplexity's public pricing page and updated every 15 minutes. Need help estimating your spend? Read the LLM API cost calculator guide — it covers tokens, context windows, prompt caching, and batch discounts with worked examples for RAG, chat history, and document processing workloads.
Perplexity context window and model capabilities
Context window size directly affects both capability and cost — every token in the context window is charged as an input token. Perplexity's largest context window is 200K tokens. For RAG and document processing workloads, longer context windows enable richer retrieval but increase per-call costs proportionally. Prompt caching — where supported — stores the KV state of repeated prefixes and charges 75–90% less for cache hits, making it the most impactful cost optimization for applications with consistent system prompts or retrieved documents. See the LLM context window cost guide for a full analysis of how context length affects your API bill.
Self-hosted vs managed inference: when Perplexity makes sense
Managed inference APIs like Perplexity eliminate infrastructure overhead — no GPU provisioning, driver management, or model serving stack to maintain. The trade-off is cost at scale: a single H100 at ~$2.50/hr can serve ~500K tokens/min of Llama 3.3 70B, which at Perplexity API rates would cost significantly more per token. The break-even point depends on your request volume, latency requirements, and engineering capacity. For teams processing fewer than ~10M tokens/day, managed APIs are almost always cheaper when total cost of ownership is considered. Above that threshold, self-hosted inference on rented GPU compute typically wins on unit economics. Read the cheapest GPU cloud guide for a full break-even analysis. Historical Perplexity token price data is available in the LLM price history charts.
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