Perplexity Launches the ‘Most Affordable’ GenAI Search API

On Wednesday, Perplexity launched its official API, Sonar, which will help developers integrate its real-time web search capabilities into their products. The AI search engine startup unveiled two versions of the API: Sonar and Sonar Pro. 

The company said Sonar Pro is “ideal for multi-step tasks requiring deep understanding and context retention”. Moreover, it provides “in-depth answers” with twice the citations of Sonar. The Pro version costs $3 per million input tokens, $15 per million output tokens, and $5 per 1,000 searches, with multiple searches allowed. 

The Sonar plan is simpler. It charges $1 per million tokens for input and output and $5 per 1,000 searches, with only one search per request.

“The excitement around trying to make agents and vertical answer engines happen is pretty clear. We want to support it through Perplexity’s search-grounded LLM API: the most affordable generative search API in the market right now,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said. 

According to Perplexity, Sonar Pro was the best-performing model on ‘factuality’ in a benchmark called SimpleQA. It revealed that companies like Zoom benefit from Sonar Pro and said that the video-conferencing tool can offer “live, real-time, and private searches without having to exit the video call. 

“With its API, we are able to extend AI Companion’s knowledge federation to include up-to-date web information without users having to shift through multiple links, right from inside a meeting or within workflows across Zoom Workplace,” said Zoom CTO Xuedong Huang. 

Doximity, a research tool for doctors, used Perplexity’s API to retrieve concise answers to medical questions. Jake Konoske, Doximity’s director of product, said the API was fast and easy to integrate into the tool.

“For physicians, we’re proud to deliver these up-to-the-minute results along with our source filtering and proprietary content to provide accurate, cited clinical answers that improve patient care,” he added. 

In December last year, the company closed its $500 million investment, which tripled its valuation to $9 billion. A few days ago, Srinivas announced plans to recruit talent to expand its presence in India. 

“I am looking to recruit someone to work together on growing Perplexity in India. It will be fun and intense. You must be based in India and willing to travel and meet with strategic partners and institutions—scrappy startup mode,” said Srinivas in a LinkedIn post.