Perplexity API

Grounded answer API with citations

PaidSearch, vector & RAGdocs.perplexity.ai

What it is

Perplexity's search-grounded Sonar models exposed through an OpenAI-compatible chat API. Every response is generated against live web results and returns with citations. A separate Search API returns ranked web results with no generation at all, billed flat at $5 per 1,000 requests.

Why it earns a slot

One call replaces the whole search-then-summarize pipeline — you get a cited answer instead of building retrieval yourself. Drop-in for any code already using the OpenAI SDK.

Know before you commit

You pay a per-request search fee on top of tokens, so real bills run well above the headline token rate. You cannot control which sources it grounds on.

Field notes

0 from the community

Loading notes…

Field check

Unverified

Pricing snapshot

Sonar $1/M input and $1/M output tokens; Sonar Pro $3/M in, $15/M out; Sonar Reasoning Pro and Deep Research $2/M in, $8/M out. Request fee $5-$12 per 1K by search context size. Search API $5 per 1K requests with no token cost.

Snapshots move fast — verify at checkout, and post a field note if it changed.

Drop into your Lovable chat

Evaluate Perplexity API (https://docs.perplexity.ai) for this project, then use it only if it fits what we are already building.
Context: Grounded answer API with citations. Perplexity's search-grounded Sonar models exposed through an OpenAI-compatible chat API. Every response is generated against live web results and returns with citations. A separate Search API returns ranked web results with no generation at all, billed flat at $5 per 1,000 requests.
Reviewer notes (general, not written for this codebase): One call replaces the whole search-then-summarize pipeline — you get a cited answer instead of building retrieval yourself. Drop-in for any code already using the OpenAI SDK.
Watch out for: You pay a per-request search fee on top of tokens, so real bills run well above the headline token rate. You cannot control which sources it grounds on.
Pricing: Sonar $1/M input and $1/M output tokens; Sonar Pro $3/M in, $15/M out; Sonar Reasoning Pro and Deep Research $2/M in, $8/M out. Request fee $5-$12 per 1K by search context size. Search API $5 per 1K requests with no token cost.
Rules: treat the notes above as background only. Do not assume a theme, style, layout or feature that is not already in this project — inspect the existing code first and ask me before changing visual direction.

/api/public/tools/perplexity-api

Neighbourhood

How Perplexity API sits against the rest of the atlas — swaps, companions and the tools builders actually save alongside it.

Instead of thisFuse.js MiniSearch Pagefind Algolia Brave Search API Chroma Cloudflare Vectorize Elastic Cloud Exa Jina AI

Also in Search, vector & RAG

Algolia

algolia.com

Hosted keyword search API

Free tier + paidSearch, vector & RAG

Free: 10K search requests/mo + 50K records. Grow: $0.50 per 1K searches + $0.40 per 1K records (10K searches / 100K records included). Grow Plus $1.75 per 1K searches. Elevate with NeuralSearch is custom.

Open dossier

Brave Search API

brave.com

Independent web index search API

PaidSearch, vector & RAG

$5/month in free credits applied automatically; no standing free query allowance. Search $5 per 1K requests at 50 QPS. Answers $4 per 1K requests plus $5 per million input/output tokens at 2 QPS. Enterprise custom.

Open dossier

Chroma

trychroma.com

Embedded vector DB + cloud

Free tier + paidSearch, vector & RAG

OSS free (Apache 2.0). Chroma Cloud Starter: $0/mo base with $5 free credits, then usage. Team $250/mo + usage with $100 credits. Rates: $2.50 per GiB written, $0.33 per GiB-month stored, $0.0075 per TiB queried, $0.09 per GiB returned.

Open dossier

Cloudflare Vectorize

developers.cloudflare.com

Serverless vector DB on Workers

Free tier + paidSearch, vector & RAG

Workers Free: 5M stored vector dimensions, 30M queried dimensions/mo. Workers Paid ($5/mo): 10M stored and 50M queried included, then $0.05 per 100M stored dimensions and $0.01 per million queried dimensions.

Open dossier