Perplexity on Tuesday launched an API service called Sonar, allowing enterprises and developers to build the startup’s search-generating AI tools into their apps.
“While most generative AI features today have answers informed only by training data, this limits their capabilities,” Perplexity wrote in a blog post. “To optimize facts and authority, APIs require a real-time connection to the Internet, with informed responses from trusted sources.”
For starters, Perplexity is offering two tiers that developers can choose from: a basic version that’s cheaper and faster, Sonar, and a pricier version that’s better for tough questions, Sonar Pro. Perplexity says the Sonar API also gives enterprises and developers the ability to customize the resources its AI search engine pulls from.
With the launch of its API, Perplexity is making its AI search engine available in more places than just its app and website. Perplexity says Zoom, among other companies, is already using Sonar to power an AI assistant for its video conferencing platform. Sonar is allowing Zoom’s AI chatbot to provide real-time responses informed by citational web searches without requiring users to leave the video chat window.
Sonar could also give Perplexity another source of revenue, which could be especially important to the startup’s investors. Perplexity only offers a subscription service for unlimited access to its AI search engine and some additional features. However, the tech industry has lowered prices to access AI tools through APIs in the past year, and Perplexity claims to offer the cheapest AI search API on the market via Sonar.
The basic version of Sonar offers a cheaper and faster version of the company’s AI search tools. The basic version of Sonar is flat priced and uses a lightweight model. It costs $5 for every 1,000 searches, plus $1 for every 750,000 words you type into the AI model (roughly 1 million input tokens), and another $1 for every 750,000 words the model outputs (roughly 1 million output tokens).
The more expensive Sonar Pro provides more detailed answers and is able to handle more complex queries. This version will perform multiple searches on top of a user notification, which means pricing can be more unpredictable. Perplexity also says that this version provides twice as many citations as the basic version of Sonar. Sonar Pro costs $5 for every 1,000 searches, plus $3 for every 750,000 words you type into the AI model (roughly 1 million input tokens) and $15 for every 750,000 words the model outputs (roughly 1 million output tokens).
Perplexity claims that Sonar Pro has outperformed leading models from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic on a benchmark that measures factual correctness in AI chatbot responses, SimpleQA.
As we recently reported, Perplexity’s annual recurring revenue is somewhere between $5 million and $10 million. That seems pretty healthy for a startup of Perplexity’s size and age, but the startup is surely looking for new ways to increase its revenue. The startup raised an additional $73.6 million in a funding round earlier this month, valuing the company at about $520 million.
