Perplexity

Perplexity is an AI search engine. For developers, the Sonar API provides grounded, cited answers for building search-enabled apps.

When to Use

• Real-time Info: “What is the stock price of Apple?” (LLMs can’t answer this without tools).
• Research Apps: Building an app that needs to cite sources.
• Citations: You need reliability and links to original data.

Core Concepts

Sonar API

API access to Perplexity’s online models (llama-3-sonar-large-32k-online).

Citations

API returns a list of citations used to generate the answer.

Pro Search

Multi-step reasoning search (Googles multiple times to answer complex queries).

Best Practices (2025)

Do:

• Use for Grounding: If your chatbot needs current events, route those queries to Perplexity.
• Use Search Options: Filter by domain (e.g., search only reddit.com or stackoverflow.com).

Don’t:

• Don’t use for creative writing: It is optimized for facts, not fiction.

References

• Perplexity API