Perplexity (answer engine)

What it is

Perplexity is an AI search product, sometimes called an answer engine. It answers questions in natural language rather than returning a list of links alone, and it cites the web sources behind its answers^[1]. The product was launched on 7 December 2022, and the company behind it is Perplexity AI^[1].

Origins

By February 2023 the service reported two million unique visitors^[1]. Those early figures show that the product drew attention quickly, although the source does not describe the audience in more detail.

Main features

The answer engine works by using large language models to read and summarise web material, then presenting the answer with links to the pages it used^[1]. The citations let a reader check the answer against the original source, which is the central idea of the product.

The paid Pro tier lets users pick among third-party frontier models, which are the most capable models offered by other developers^[1]. Perplexity also runs its own models. Sonar is based on Llama 3.3, and R1 1776 is based on DeepSeek-R1^[1].

Added features

The product grew beyond answers to questions. Finance data arrived in October 2024, a Shopping Hub in November 2024 and Perplexity Assistant in January 2025^[1]. Each feature extended the product from answering questions toward helping with specific tasks.

Deep Research was launched on 14 February 2025. It runs dozens of searches, reads hundreds of sources and reasons over them to produce a full report^[2]. Perplexity reported 21.1% on Humanity's Last Exam and 93.9% on SimpleQA for the feature^[2]. Humanity's Last Exam is a difficult test of expert knowledge, and SimpleQA is a test of short factual questions. These are the company's own figures. Deep Research was free to all users with daily limits, and Pro subscribers received a much higher volume of queries^[2].

In February 2026 Perplexity launched Perplexity Computer, a general-purpose agent. It coordinates multiple models and subagents, which are smaller agents that a main agent directs^[1]. The same month the company moved to a subscription-first model without advertising^[1].

Position in the field

The answer engine is one of several products that combine search with language models. Its distinguishing features are the citations, the choice of models for paid users and the expansion into agents. The product is also part of the company's disputes over content and crawling, which are covered in the company's entry.

Limits

Feature names, dates and tiers may change, so readers should check the current product pages for the latest details.