Perplexity has announced the launch of its new Search API, giving developers direct access to the same global-scale infrastructure that powers Perplexity’s public answer engine. With an index covering hundreds of billions of webpages, the API is designed to bring realtime, accurate, and trusted search to modern AI and software applications.

Built for AI Workloads

Unlike traditional APIs that only expose limited or outdated results, the Perplexity Search API delivers:

• Fine-grained retrieval – Documents are divided into sub-units for more relevant snippets.

• Rich structured responses – Optimized for both AI-driven and traditional applications.

• Real-time freshness – Indexes are updated every second, ensuring developers always get the latest information.

Perplexity’s AI-powered content understanding module dynamically parses the open web, improving relevance and accuracy while continuously optimizing itself.

Image courtesy: Perplexity

Accuracy, Performance, and Cost

Perplexity has emphasized accuracy and trust since its inception, pioneering source-backed AI answers. With this launch, developers can now leverage the same infrastructure optimized for low latency, high relevance, and competitive pricing.

To back up performance claims, Perplexity is also releasing search_evals, an open-source evaluation framework for benchmarking search APIs across relevance, speed, and cost.

Developer-Friendly Design

Alongside the API, Perplexity introduced:

• A Search SDK for rapid prototyping.

• A new API Platform housing documentation and developer tools.

• Integration-ready ergonomics designed for AI agents and human developers alike.

Perplexity engineers have already used the SDK to build prototypes in under an hour—highlighting the ease of adoption for startups, enterprises, and solo developers.

What’s Next

The Search API team will showcase the technology at Perplexity’s API Day in San Francisco and a London hackathon next month. Developers can also engage online through Perplexity’s community channels.

By opening access to its search infrastructure, Perplexity is extending its mission of democratizing knowledge—this time to developers, who can now build AI-powered applications with internet-scale search at their fingertips.