Perplexity is the commercial name of Perplexity AI, Inc., the company that operates the Perplexity answer engine at perplexity.ai, the Computer agent and a set of application programming interfaces. For a software asset manager the useful starting point is that Perplexity does not sell one licence. It sells three distinct commercial products on three distinct sets of terms: individual subscriptions bought by a person, per-seat Enterprise subscriptions bought by an organization, and a prepaid-credit API Platform bought by developers. The Enterprise Terms and Conditions describe a binding contract between the customer organization and Perplexity AI, Inc.[7] The consumer Terms of Service state that they do not govern the company’s APIs, which have their own terms.[5]
Perplexity describes its plans as Individual (Standard Free, Pro, Max and Education Pro), Enterprise (Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max) and API (the API Platform, for individuals and enterprises).[1] The sections below summarize each and point to the deeper articles.
Editions
Individual plans
The Free (Standard) plan offers practically unlimited basic searches and a very limited number of Pro Searches, with limited file uploads and no access to advanced models or image generation.[1] Pro adds extended Pro Search, access to advanced models, image and video generation, higher file limits and exclusive support channels.[1] Max includes everything in Pro and adds the highest level of access to the advanced model suite, extended limits for Create files and apps, early access to new products and priority support.[3] Education Pro is offered to verified students and educators and is listed at $10 per month with verification from SheerID.[1]
Published prices are not uniform across Perplexity’s own pages. The help center states that Max costs $200 per month or $2,000 per year, with annual billing available only on the web app.[3] The public plan page shows Pro at $17 per month or equivalent when billed annually and Max at $167 per month or equivalent when billed annually, and does not show a monthly-billed price for Pro.[4] A buyer should therefore read the checkout page for the billing period and region rather than rely on a single number.
Enterprise plans
Enterprise pricing is per seat. An organization buys Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max seats on a monthly or yearly subscription and assigns them to people, and a seat can be moved between team members without a new purchase.[2] Enterprise Pro is $40 per seat per month or $400 per seat per year, and Enterprise Max is $325 per seat per month or $3,250 per seat per year.[2] Organizations can combine both tiers.[2] The two tiers differ in usage limits and in access to premium security features, covered in the plans article and the security article.
API Platform
The API Platform is sold as prepaid credits. The documentation describes a credit-based billing system in which credits are purchased in advance and used for API calls.[8] Orchestrator API usage is billed per token with no per-request fees, the Agent API bills model tokens plus per-invocation tool charges, the Search API bills per successful request, and the Embeddings and Decisions APIs bill per million tokens.[8] Rate limits scale with usage tiers based on cumulative credits purchased.[11] Sonar Chat Completions support ended on September 27, 2026, with the Agent API as the recommended replacement.[14] See the API article for rates and tiers.
Metrics
Perplexity’s commercial metrics fall into three families.
- Seats and subscriptions. The Enterprise seat is bought by the organization and assigned to members. The Individual subscription is tied to one account.
- Credits. The Computer credit is worth one cent at the published rate: “Today, 100 credits equals $1.”[9] Enterprise organizations also have an organization credit pool with named usage limits.[10] Paid Consumer Pro plans include weekly Computer usage applied before credits.[9]
- API units. The API credit is the prepaid balance, consumed by Agent API tokens, tool invocations, Search API requests, embeddings tokens and Decisions API input tokens. The API usage tier is a rate-limit band, not a price.[11]
Counting / floors
Seat counting is deliberately simple but has traps. A pending invitation holds a seat until it is accepted, canceled or declined, and removing a member frees the seat without lowering the number of seats bought or creating a credit.[13] A seat reduction applies only from the next billing period.[13] Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max seats are counted separately, so moving a member to a lower tier can still create a charge.[13]
Two floors matter for Enterprise planning. Perplexity states that SCIM, audit logs and configurable data retention are available to organizations with 50 or more seats or at least one Enterprise Max user.[17] Computer is available on both Enterprise tiers, and each Enterprise Pro seat includes a monthly credit allocation.[15] For the API, the AWS Marketplace listing starts at USD 1,000 of credits on a one-month contract.[12]
Virtualization & partitioning
Not applicable. Perplexity sells hosted services and does not publish processor, core, virtual machine or device rules. Access is governed by accounts, seats and credits. The Enterprise Terms add that authorized users may not make their individual accounts accessible to other personnel or to third parties.[7]
Cloud / BYOL
There is no bring-your-own-licence mechanism. The relevant cloud-related points are commercial. The API Platform can be bought through AWS Marketplace, where credits are provisioned into a new API project and are not added to an existing self-service project.[12] The Enterprise pricing FAQ states that API usage is not included with Enterprise Pro or Enterprise Max, so API credits are a separate purchase.[2] The help center states that a Perplexity subscription is not required to buy API credits or use the API.[18]
Programs
- Education Pro: a discounted plan for verified students and educators.[1]
- Enterprise education and non-profit discounts: discount codes after Perplexity validates eligibility.[2]
- AWS Marketplace API credits: consolidated billing and enterprise procurement for API credits.[12]
- New-subscriber Computer bonus credits: one-time bonus credits that expire in about 30 days.[9]
- Premium security features access: the 50-seat or one-Enterprise-Max threshold for SCIM, audit logs and retention controls.[17]
Data use and contracts
The three contracts handle customer content differently, which matters when a business user signs up with a personal account. The consumer terms grant Perplexity a licence to access, use, host, store, reproduce, display, distribute and modify user content to operate, improve, promote and provide the Services.[5] The Enterprise and API terms state that Perplexity will not use customer content to train, retrain, fine-tune or otherwise improve generative AI models.[7][6] The help center states that Enterprise organization data is never used to train or fine-tune Perplexity’s models and that its agreements with third-party model providers prevent training on Perplexity data.[15] The API documentation states a zero data retention policy for the Chat Completions API.[16] See the terms article for clause-level detail.
Out of scope
This article does not cover Comet (the Perplexity browser) beyond its credit behaviour, Perplexity’s publisher programs, shopping features, the licences or terms of the third-party models that Perplexity routes to, or consumer privacy practices. Pro’s monthly list price is not stated on the pages reviewed and should be taken from the checkout page. The consumer Terms of Service and the Enterprise Terms can be updated by Perplexity and should be re-read at each renewal.[7]