Perplexity Search API: Pricing, Features & Alternatives

Perplexity sells two ways in. The Search API returns ranked web results as JSON, with up to five queries in one request counted as a single billable request. The Agent API, which replaced Sonar Chat Completions, runs a model of your choice (Perplexity's own Sonar or models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI and others) with a web_search tool and returns a cited answer, so you can skip writing the retrieval loop yourself. Sonar Chat Completions support ended on 27 September 2026; synchronous requests are being reformulated as Agent API calls.

The Search API is $5 per 1,000 requests, or $1 per 1,000 with Fast Search. In the Agent API, web_search costs $2.50 per 1,000 calls ($1 with Fast Search) and fetch_url $0.50 per 1,000, plus each model's token rates. Billing is prepaid credit; failed and rate-limited requests are not billed. As of October 2026.