Minute Verdict
Perplexity sells three things: a free tier that already answers with sources, a Pro plan at $17 a month billed annually, and Max at $167 a month billed annually. Teams pay per seat, $40 a month for Enterprise Pro and $325 a month for Enterprise Max.
The gap between the consumer plans is volume, not capability. Max costs 9.8 times Pro, and what changes is the credit balance, the usage ceiling and access to frontier models. Over twelve months that is $204 for Pro against $2,004 for Max.
Most readers should stay on Free and spend nothing. Pay $17 when deep research and model choice become daily habits. Pay $167 only when Computer is the work itself, because at that price you are buying credits, and the credit price is published: 100 credits to the dollar. Every amount here was read on November 11, 2026, and the Perplexity review quotes the same two rates.
What Perplexity does
Perplexity is an answer engine. You ask a question, it reads the web and answers with citations attached to the sentences, which the free tier already delivers in full.
The paid product is Computer, an agent that takes a task rather than a question. It builds documents, small applications, dashboards and reports, and it draws on a credit balance rather than a query counter. Pro adds deep research, the choice between models, more memory and expanded Computer access. Max raises the ceiling on all of it. The Perplexity Computer pricing review covers the worker itself; this page covers what each plan charges for it.
The model list is now published on the plan page, which was not the case a month ago: GPT-6.1 Sol from OpenAI, Gemini 3.8 Flash from Google, Claude Sonnet 5.5 from Anthropic, Kimi K3 from Moonshot AI and GLM 5.3 from Z.ai. The last two are hosted in the United States, a detail that matters to a team with data residency rules.
On this page
What you get for the money
| Plan | Price | What it adds | The limit that matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Answers with cited sources, sign up required | No Computer credits and no model choice |
| Pro | $17/month billed annually | Expanded Computer access, deep research, model choice, documents and apps, more usage and memory, a 4,000 credit bonus | No monthly credit allocation, only a weekly Computer allowance, and no month-to-month rate published |
| Max | $167/month billed annually | Maximum Computer usage, expert level research, frontier models, priority access, 10,000 credits a month, a 35,000 credit bonus | 9.8 times the Pro price for headroom rather than a new function |
| Enterprise Pro | $40/seat/month or $400/seat/year | Team administration, SSO and SCIM, extended usage limits, 500 credits a seat a month | Sold in seats, no self-serve trial, API billed separately |
| Enterprise Max | $325/seat/month or $3,250/seat/year | Highest usage levels, up to 10,000 personal files, 15 video generations a month, 15,000 credits a seat a month | Same seat conditions, at eight times the Enterprise Pro rate |
Two things decide what you actually pay. The first is the billing view: $17 and $167 are the annual-billing rates, with no monthly figure beside them.
The second is credits. Computer runs on them, 100 credits equal $1, and the help center’s own table prices a quick fact at 15 to 70 credits, a multi-step research report at 350 to 950, a data dashboard at 2,400 to 9,800 and a full application build above 15,000. Read as money, that is $3.50 for the lightest research task, $24 for a small dashboard and $150 for a build. Max includes 10,000 credits a month, which is $100 of Computer work at that rate, on top of $167 in subscription.
Pro works differently. It carries no monthly credit allocation. It includes a weekly amount of Computer usage instead, resetting every seven days, which does not roll over and is separate from the credit balance. The catch is written on the same help page: the weekly allowance is rolling out gradually, and it runs tasks on the Light effort setting only until credits are available.
Enterprise is a third ladder. Seats cost $40 a month or $400 a year for Enterprise Pro, and $325 a month or $3,250 a year for Enterprise Max, with the annual rate equivalent to a discount of about 16.7 percent on Enterprise Pro.
Where it falls short
The missing monthly rate is the first problem. Perplexity publishes the annual-billing price and adds the words equivalent, when billed annually. Its refund policy then separates monthly and annual subscriptions, with a 24-hour window on monthly plans and 72 hours on annual ones. Both billing cycles therefore exist, and only one of them has a published price.
The bonus credits are the second. Both plan cards advertise free Computer credits in limited time, $40 on Pro and $450 on Max, and the credits help page adds the expiry: roughly 30 days, one bonus per account, and no repeat after a cancellation, a switch between monthly and yearly billing or a later discount. The value on the renewal date is therefore not the value on the signup page.
Credit pricing is the third and the one that surprises people. A subscription that meters Computer in credits behaves like a prepaid card, and the help page calls the task ranges examples rather than guarantees. A week of heavy agent use can consume more than a month of light use, and auto-refill is a setting away from a second charge.
The weekly Computer allowance on Pro is the fourth. It is being rolled out account by account, so two readers paying the same $17 can have different products today, and the allowance runs at the Light effort setting until credits are bought.
The last gap is administrative. There is no self-serve trial on either Enterprise tier, API access is billed on a separate meter at every seat level, and the education discount exists without a published price: it requires a SheerID verification and is described only as a discount.
Perplexity alternatives
The three names below are what a Perplexity buyer weighs against $17.
- Grok, the assistant bundled with an X subscription, at $8 a month for Plus, for a buyer who already pays for the network and wants a larger allowance than Free: read the Grok review and the Grok pricing breakdown.
- Kimi, a long context chat with its own agent, at $19 a month, for documents and research threads that outgrow a chat window: read the Kimi review.
- DeepSeek, whose chat is free and whose API runs from $0.15 per million input tokens, for the cheapest way to put a reasoning model behind a script: read the DeepSeek review.
Who it is for: Perplexity
Perplexity suits a researcher who wants an answer with its sources attached and does not want to assemble the citations. At $0 the habit costs nothing and the citations are already there, which is why the free tier is the honest recommendation for most readers.
It suits a working user at $17 once deep research, model choice and long documents are part of the week. That is a modest step for someone who runs a few reports a month, and the weekly allowance softens it, provided the account has it.
It does not suit a buyer who needs a fixed monthly figure before paying, or a team that wants predictable cost per task. For those, the AI chat tools hub lists the field we price the same way.
How we checked
This is a research page. Nobody on the team has paid for a Perplexity seat, so there is no hands-on score and no sample invoice.
Every amount was read on November 11, 2026, on one plan page and four help center articles: the two consumer rates and the model list, both seat ladders with their annual equivalents, the credit exchange rate and the task ranges, the weekly allowance, the bonus expiry, the cancellation windows and the payment methods. We could not read the month-to-month price, because it appears only past the checkout step, and we have not run a billing cycle to see what a top-up charge looks like on a statement. Our how we test page covers what a page like this can establish, and the editorial policy covers how the site is funded.
What to do next
Start on Free with a real question and a real document. If the limits or the research depth get in the way, pay $17 for Pro, which is the only step that adds a function rather than volume, and watch the weekly Computer allowance on the usage page before buying credits.
Move to $167 only after a month of Pro has run dry, and treat it as a credit purchase with a subscription attached. For a team, compare the seat ladder against the number of people who actually use Computer, since Enterprise Pro at $40 a seat buys administration and SSO rather than a larger credit pool. The AI tools directory lists the rest of the field, and the Grok pricing page is the closest comparison at the low end.
FAQ
Is Perplexity free? Yes. Free costs $0 and answers with cited sources. The paid plans add deeper research, model choice, Computer credits and higher usage limits.
How much does Perplexity Pro cost? $17 a month when billed annually. No month-to-month rate is published on the plan page, so the flexible price only appears at checkout.
How much is Perplexity Max? $167 a month when billed annually. It adds maximum Computer usage, 10,000 monthly credits, expert level research and frontier models.
What does Perplexity Enterprise cost? Enterprise Pro is $40 a seat a month or $400 a seat a year. Enterprise Max is $325 a seat a month or $3,250 a seat a year, and both are sold as seats in blocks.
What is a Perplexity credit worth? 100 credits equal $1. A quick fact uses 15 to 70 credits, a research report 350 to 950, and a dashboard 2,400 to 9,800.
Can I cancel and get a refund? Cancelling happens in Account settings, under Your subscription. Refunds run 24 hours on a monthly plan, 72 hours on an annual plan, 14 days in the EU, UK and Turkey, and 7 days in South Korea and Brazil.
Sources
- perplexity.ai/pro, read November 11, 2026: the Pro and Max rates with their annual billing label, the bonus credits, the plan feature lists and the five named models.
- perplexity.ai/enterprise, read November 11, 2026: the Enterprise positioning, the security claims and the absence of a seat price on the marketing page.
- Enterprise pricing and billing FAQ, read November 11, 2026: the $40 and $325 seat rates, the $400 and $3,250 annual seats, the API exclusion and the missing trials.
- How credits work on Perplexity, read November 11, 2026: 100 credits to the dollar, the task ranges, the monthly allocations, the weekly allowance and the bonus expiry.
- Refunds, read November 11, 2026: the 24-hour, 72-hour, 14-day and 7-day windows by region and billing cycle.
- Billing FAQ for Pro subscribers, read November 11, 2026: the payment methods, the cancellation steps and the absence of a pause option.
Update log
November 11, 2026: first publication. Consumer rates, seat prices, credit economics and refund windows read on the six Perplexity pages cited above.
