Perplexity AI

Perplexity is an answer engine rather than a chatbot: it runs a live web search, synthesises a response and cites the sources inline so you can verify every claim. That focus makes it the better tool for research, due diligence and fact-checking, where provenance matters more than fluency. Paid tiers let you route queries to frontier models from several providers, and add Deep Research, file uploads, image generation and Spaces for organising projects.

The ladder runs Free with a small daily allowance of Pro searches, Pro at $20 a month or about $200 a year, Education Pro around $10 with student verification, Max at $200 for autonomous background agents, and Enterprise seats above that. Comet, its agentic browser, became free on all platforms in March 2026 and no longer requires a subscription. Note that agentic browsers carry a real security consideration: researchers demonstrated prompt-injection attacks against Comet in 2026.