Perplexity Pricing (October 2026): Free, Pro, Max & Enterprise

Perplexity Pro costs $20 a month or $200 a year, and Perplexity Max costs $200 a month or $2,000 a year. The pricing page shows these as $17 and $167 per month billed annually. There's also a Free plan, Education Pro for verified students and educators at $10 a month, and two business plans: Enterprise Pro ($40/seat/month) and Enterprise Max ($325/seat/month). Max and the Enterprise plans include monthly credits for Perplexity Computer, the agent that runs multi-step tasks. All figures come from Perplexity's pricing page and help center, checked on October 17, 2026.

Plan-by-plan breakdown

Free

The Free plan gives practically unlimited basic searches with citations in every answer, search history, a very small number of Pro Searches and limited file uploads. It doesn't include advanced models, image generation or Computer. Perplexity describes it as good for limited daily use.

Pro ($20/month)

Pro raises every limit. It adds Perplexity Computer with a weekly usage allowance, Deep Research, a choice of top models (the help center names GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Gemini 3.1 Pro), Create files and apps, image and limited video generation, up to 50 file uploads per project, premium data sources such as PitchBook, Statista and S&P Capital IQ, Model Council and priority support. New Pro subscribers get a one-time bonus of 4,000 credits. Perplexity says advanced model access may be limited during weeks of especially heavy use.

Education Pro ($10/month)

Education Pro includes everything in Pro, plus Learn Mode and education-specific tips. You need to verify as a student or educator through SheerID, and the discount is applied automatically. See Perplexity Pro student discount for eligibility details.

Max ($200/month)

Max includes everything in Pro, plus the highest consumer limits on searches, Deep Research, file and app creation, uploads and video. It gives the highest access to frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others, Max Assistant in the Comet browser with the highest browser agent limit, early access to new products, the Brain research preview in Computer (free during the preview) and priority support. Max includes 10,000 credits a month and a one-time bonus of 35,000. Annual billing for Max is only available on the web.

Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max

Enterprise plans are priced per seat. Enterprise Pro includes 400 Pro Searches a week, 50 Research queries a month, 80 Comet Assistant queries a month, 50 file and app creations a month and 100 file session uploads a week. Enterprise Max raises those to 4,000, 500, 800, 500 and 1,000, and adds 10,000 files in My Files, 15 eight-second videos a month and premium security features (SCIM, audit logs, configurable data retention and Insights). Both include seat management, SSO and a promise that your data is never used for training. Perplexity says there are no self-serve Enterprise trials, and discounts may be available for teams of 250+, schools, universities, nonprofits and government agencies.

How credits and Computer work

Credits only pay for Perplexity Computer tasks. Normal Ask searches don't use them. Perplexity says 100 credits cost $1 and gives these rough estimates per task:

• Pro uses its weekly Computer allowance first. It resets every week and doesn't roll over.
• Next come bonus credits, then monthly plan credits, then purchased credits.
• Bonus credits expire about 30 days after they're granted. Unused monthly credits don't roll over. Purchased credits expire if you don't use Computer for a year.
• Auto-refill is off by default. When it's on, it triggers at 500 credits on Pro and 2,500 on Max.
• Max has a monthly spending cap that defaults to $200 and can be raised to $5,000.
• If you run out, active tasks pause rather than cancel and resume when you add credits or your monthly credits reset.

Worked cost examples

These examples use Perplexity's official USD prices and exclude tax.

1. Monthly vs annual billing

• Pro: $20 × 12 = $240 monthly vs $200 annual, so you save $40 (about 16.7%). $200 ÷ 12 = $16.67, which the pricing page rounds to $17.
• Max: $200 × 12 = $2,400 vs $2,000, so you save $400. $2,000 ÷ 12 = $166.67, shown as $167.
• Enterprise Pro: $40 × 12 = $480 vs $400 per seat, so you save $80 per seat.
• Enterprise Max: $325 × 12 = $3,900 vs $3,250 per seat, so you save $650 per seat.

2. Is Max worth it over Pro?

On annual billing, Max costs $2,000 − $200 = $1,800 more per year than Pro. Part of that comes back as credits: 10,000 credits a month × 12 = 120,000 credits, which at $1 per 100 credits is worth $1,200 at the purchase rate. The 35,000-credit bonus adds $350 more, but it expires in about 30 days. If you wouldn't use most of those credits, the higher limits and frontier model access have to justify the remaining cost.

3. What Max's monthly credits cover

Using Perplexity's own estimates, 10,000 credits cover about 10,000 ÷ 950 ≈ 10 to 10,000 ÷ 350 ≈ 28 multi-step research reports, or roughly one to four data dashboards (10,000 ÷ 9,800 ≈ 1 to 10,000 ÷ 2,400 ≈ 4).

4. Buying credits on Pro instead

A Pro user who needs five data dashboards beyond the weekly allowance would use 5 × 2,400 = 12,000 to 5 × 9,800 = 49,000 credits. At $1 per 100 credits, that's $120 to $490. If that happens every month, Max's 10,000 included credits can work out cheaper.

5. A 20-person team on Enterprise Pro

On annual billing: 20 × $400 = $8,000 per year. On monthly billing: 20 × $40 × 12 = $9,600 per year. An eligible school or nonprofit paying the $300/seat annual rate would pay 20 × $300 = $6,000 per year.

6. Education Pro savings

Education Pro is $10 a month, so a student saves $20 − $10 = $10 a month, or $120 a year, compared with monthly Pro. Compared with annual Pro ($200), a year of Education Pro at $10 × 12 = $120 still saves $80.

Which plan fits which user

• Casual researchers: Free covers quick cited answers.
• Students and teachers: Education Pro at $10 is the cheapest way to get Pro features.
• Professionals who use Deep Research weekly: Pro, billed annually if you're sure you'll keep it.
• People who run Computer agents for reports, dashboards or apps: Max, because of its 10,000 monthly credits.
• Companies that need SSO, seat management and a no-training guarantee: Enterprise Pro, or Enterprise Max for heavy users.

Billing, cancellation and refunds

• Cancel from Account settings: select Manage under "Your subscription", then Cancel subscription. Your account returns to Free at the end of the billing cycle. There's no pause option.
• App Store and Google Play subscriptions are managed in those stores. Don't change payment details there for a web subscription, or you'll create and pay for a second subscription.
• Upgrading from Pro to Max on the web carries over your balance and bills the prorated difference. Upgrading in the iOS app creates a separate Max subscription, and any refund for unused Pro time comes from Apple.
• Refund windows: 24 hours for monthly plans and 72 hours for annual plans in most countries; 14 days in the EU, UK and Turkey; 7 days in South Korea and Brazil. Only one refund per account.
• Enterprise seats: removing a member frees the seat but doesn't lower the bill. Lower the seat count in Billing, and the change applies from the next billing period. Invoice billing is for annual plans only.

Perplexity's API Platform is billed separately from Pro, Max and Enterprise seats. A consumer subscription doesn't include API usage.

How Perplexity compares

At $20, Perplexity Pro costs the same as ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro. Perplexity's strength is cited web research and the option to switch between OpenAI, Anthropic and Google models in one app. Google AI Pro adds 5 TB of storage for about the same price. For free and discounted routes across all these tools, see our guide to getting free AI credits.

Common gotchas

• The $17 and $167 prices are annual rates. Monthly billing costs $20 and $200.
• Bonus credits expire in about 30 days. Use them early or lose them.
• Trials and promos renew automatically at the standard rate unless you cancel before the trial ends, and they need a valid card.
• Organization File Repository was retired for new Enterprise plans on October 1, 2026.