Perplexity launches Sonar, an AI search API
Perplexity on Tuesday launched an API service called Sonar, allowing organizations and developers to build the startup’s generative AI research tools into their own applications.
“Although most AI features produced today have answers based solely on training data, this limits their capabilities,” Perplexity wrote in an article. Blog post. “To improve realism and authority, APIs require instant internet connectivity, with informed answers from trusted sources.”
To get started, Perplexity offers two tiers that developers can choose from: a cheaper, faster basic version, Sonar, and a higher-priced version that’s better for tough questions, Sonar Pro. Perplexity says the Sonar API also gives organizations and developers the ability to customize the sources from which its AI search engine pulls.
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 the AI assistant for its video conferencing platform. Sonar allows Zoom’s AI chatbot to provide answers in real-time, based on web searches with citations, without requiring users to leave the video chat window.
Sonar could also give Perplexity another source of income, which could be especially important to startup investors. Perplexity only offers a subscription service for unlimited access to its AI search engine and some additional features. However, the tech industry has reduced prices for accessing AI tools via 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-based search tools. The basic version of Sonar has a fixed price and uses a lightweight model. It costs $5 per 1,000 searches, plus $1 for every 750,000 words you type into the AI model (nearly 1 million input tokens), and another $1 for every 750,000 words the model outputs (about 1 million output tokens).
The more expensive Sonar Pro offers more detailed answers and is capable of handling more complex questions. This version will perform multiple searches on top of a user prompt, which means prices may be unpredictable. Perplexity also says that this version offers 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 (about 1 million input tokens), and $15 for every 750,000 words the model outputs (about 1 million output tokens).
Perplexity claims Sonar Pro outperforms leading models from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic in a benchmark that measures real-world correctness in AI chatbot answers, SimpleQA.
As we recently reported, Perplexity’s annual recurring revenue is Somewhere between $5 million and $10 million. This seems fairly healthy for a startup of Perplexity’s size and age, but the startup is definitely looking for new ways to grow its revenue. The startup raised an additional $73.6 million in a funding round earlier this month, valuing the company at about $520 million.
