Perplexity Pricing Explained (2026): What Pro, Max and Enterprise Cost

Perplexity Pro costs $17 a month billed annually, and that is the only Pro price on any Perplexity page I read. Max costs $167 a month billed annually, or $200 month to month. I read every plan card and help article behind those numbers on 16 October 2026.

The rest of the ladder, as of October 2026: Free is $0 and Education Pro is $10 a month. Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max cost $34 and $271 per seat a month, billed annually, and a Custom tier is quote-only.

Below I price each plan on the billing cycle you would actually use, explain the credit meter that sits on top, and say which plan I would pick for each kind of week. Still choosing a research tool at all? Start with our guide to AI research assistants.

How I read the prices

I read Perplexity's pricing page (both tabs), its /pro and /max pages, ten help articles and the API docs on 16 October 2026, through a US connection and an Indian one. I had read most of them on 12 October too. Every list price matched on every load, on both days.

On 16 October the US connection got the marketing pages in Spanish, so Pro read "USD 17/mes con facturación anual". The Indian connection got English. Both showed US dollars, and no rupee appeared on any load.

The plan area has two buttons, "Individual" and "Enterprise", and no monthly toggle. Each paid card shows a monthly figure "when billed annually", which is the annual price over twelve, rounded up. Max's $2,000 a year works out to $166.67 a month and shows as $167; Enterprise Pro's $400 a year is $33.33 and shows as $34.

So never multiply a card price by twelve. Do it with Pro's $17 and you get a total no Perplexity page I read prints.

Perplexity plans at a glance

Seven plans, read 16 October 2026. The limits column uses the help centre's own wording, which puts hard numbers on Free and the two Enterprise plans only.

Prices from perplexity.ai/hub/pricing (both tabs), Perplexity's Max help article and, for Education Pro, the plan comparison article; limits from the help article "Which Perplexity Subscription Plan is right for you?" (last modified 8 October 2026). All read 16 October 2026. Quoted fit lines are Perplexity's; the Education Pro and Enterprise Pro fit lines are my summaries of its wording.

Perplexity Pro: what $17 a month buys

Pro is $17 a month billed annually as of 16 October 2026, sold as "Better answers. More answers. Built for serious work." The card lists:

• "Expanded Computer access", the part of Perplexity that runs on credits (more below).
• "4,000 bonus credits", one-time, which expire in about 30 days.
• "Deep research".
• "Access to top AI models" and "Select between AI models": you pick among third-party models for each query, and Perplexity's own pages disagree on which ones, so I list none.
• "Create polished documents & apps".
• "More usage limits and memory".

The pricing FAQ adds "premium data sources like PitchBook and Statista" and "model council". Our AI market research tools comparison looks at Perplexity for cited desk research, paid sources included.

Paid Pro also includes weekly Computer usage, with two catches in Perplexity's own wording. It covers paid Pro only, not "promotional or non-paying Pro plans". And it "is rolling out gradually; if you don't see Included in Pro on your Usage page, your account doesn't have it yet." Until you have credits, that included usage runs tasks on the Light effort setting only.

The help centre's comparison table gives Pro "Weekly limits (average use)" on Pro Searches and "Monthly limits (average use)" on Research, Comet Assistant queries and file and app creation, with no number on any of them. Support is "Priority", and an AI training opt-out is available.

Perplexity prints no month-to-month price for Pro

On 16 October 2026 I checked every Perplexity page in this post's sources for one, from the pricing page and /pro to the Billing FAQ, Refunds and the iOS and Android billing articles. None prints a monthly Pro price or a Pro annual total. Checkout sits behind a login, and I did not go past it.

So the truthful answer to "how much is Perplexity Pro a month" is $17 on annual billing, and no published figure for anything else. Before you pay, read the billing cycle and the total that checkout shows you.

Perplexity Max: $167 billed annually, $200 monthly

Max is the only individual plan with both prices in writing. The pricing page shows $167 a month "when billed annually", and Perplexity's Max help article (last modified 14 September 2026, read 16 October) gives the totals: "Perplexity Max costs $200/monthly or $2000/annually. Please note, the annual billing option is only available for the web app version."

What Perplexity prints, 16 October 2026: every figure comes from its pricing page, /pro, /max or help articles. "Not printed" means no Perplexity page I read carried one.

Twelve months at $200 is $2,400, so annual Max saves $400 a year at October 2026 prices, two months' worth.

The card adds "Maximum Computer usage", 10,000 monthly credits, 35,000 bonus credits that expire in about 30 days, "Expert level research" and "Frontier AI models". The pricing FAQ is more concrete: Max has "higher limits on Deep Research, asset generation, and file uploads, plus more video creation per month and several Model Council runs per month." Computer itself is on Pro as well; Max buys more of it.

Buy it on the web. Max is "currently available only for consumers on a Free or Pro plan", and moving from Pro on the web carries over your balance and bills "the prorated amount". Upgrading in the mobile app "will create a new separate Max subscription in addition to your ongoing Pro subscription." Refunds are tight too: Perplexity's Refunds article and its Max article both give monthly subscriptions 24 hours and disagree on the annual window. The Refunds article sets longer windows for the EU, UK and Turkey (14 days) and Korea and Brazil (7 days). Take one month at $200 before you commit $2,000.

Max's "Unlimited" tagline sits beside a table of limits

The Max cards on /pro and /max said "Unlimited usage and top performance" on 16 October 2026, and the pricing page's Max card promised "No limits on scale". The help centre's comparison table gives Max "Weekly limits (advanced use)" and "Monthly limits (advanced use)" instead. Unlimited, with limits.

Where those limits sit, Perplexity does not say. Treat Max as the highest consumer ceiling it sells, with the height unpublished.

Computer credits, the second meter

Your plan pays for answers. Credits pay for Computer. Perplexity's credits help article, read 16 October 2026, sets the rate: "Today, 100 credits equals $1." Ordinary searches stay off this meter, because "Perplexity Ask searches do not consume credits."

Allowances differ by plan, as of October 2026. Paid Pro gets weekly included usage, which "does not add to your credit balance and cannot be purchased, transferred, or refunded". Max gets 10,000 credits a month, and the one-time bonuses (4,000 on Pro, 35,000 on Max, 40,000 on Enterprise Max) expire in about 30 days. "Unused monthly credits do not roll over," and allowances "may change and can vary by promotion, region, or plan."

A research report runs 350 to 950 credits, or $3.50 to $9.50

Perplexity publishes sample task costs and calls them "examples, not guarantees". For the smallest it says: "A quick fact or definition uses about 15 to 70 credits. Bigger projects use more." Here is its full list, converted at its own rate.

Credit ranges from Perplexity's "How Credits Work on Perplexity" help article, read 16 October 2026. The dollar column is my arithmetic at the article's stated rate.

Set Max's 10,000 monthly credits against that list and they cover roughly 10 to 28 research reports. One data dashboard at the top of its range would use 98% of the month. An app build at 15,000-plus credits does not fit inside Max's 10,000 monthly credits.

Buying more is opt-in. Auto-refill "is off by default" and triggers at 500 credits on Pro and 2,500 on Max. Every Max account has a monthly spending cap on credit charges: "The default is $200, and you can set it anywhere up to $5,000." Pro accounts have a monthly cap too, and purchased credits "expire if you don't use Computer for one year."

Education Pro costs $10 a month after SheerID verification

Education Pro is $10 a month as of 16 October 2026, a figure Perplexity prints in one place, its plan comparison article: "Education Pro ($10/mo with verification from SheerID)." The /pro FAQ says it "includes all Pro features at a reduced price for verified students and faculty at university-level institutions."

Verify through SheerID first, then upgrade on desktop web: "Your verified Education Pro discount is applied at checkout." No annual Education Pro price is printed.

There is one wording clash: the Education Pro help text promises "unlimited Pro Searches", while the comparison table gives Education Pro "Weekly limits (average use)", the same as Pro. I would plan around the table. Our guide to AI study assistants covers which study tools earn a subscription.

Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max: $34 and $271 a seat

Enterprise Pro costs $34 and Enterprise Max $271 per seat a month, both "when billed annually", on the Enterprise tab I read on 16 October 2026. A third card says "Custom pricing" and adds role-based access, a custom enterprise domain, a dedicated CSM and "Volume discounts" through sales.

The help centre prints Enterprise Pro's totals: "Per-seat pricing (starts at $40/month or $400/year/seat)." At those October 2026 figures a seat starts at $480 a year on monthly billing against $400 on annual, $80 less. Enterprise Max has no printed total; $271 is its only figure.

Enterprise Pro is "Everything in Pro" plus 500 monthly Computer credits a seat, "Guaranteed no training on your data", SSO, "SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS compliance" and "Dedicated Enterprise support". SCIM, audit logs and data retention settings appear on the Enterprise Max card, though the comparison grid marks them "Contract required" on both Enterprise plans.

Here is the ratio I would budget around. At October 2026 prices an Enterprise Max seat costs about eight times an Enterprise Pro seat, $271 against $34. The help table gives it ten times every numbered limit: 4,000 Pro Searches a week against 400, 500 Research queries a month against 50 and 1,000 file uploads a week against 100. Monthly Computer credits go up thirty times, from 500 to 15,000.

The two seat types mix. Perplexity's Enterprise FAQ: "Can one organization mix Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max users? Yes." No seat minimum is printed for either plan, the same refund policy applies to Enterprise, and removing a member mid-period "does not create an automatic refund or credit".

Eligible educational institutions and nonprofits can get Enterprise Pro at $30 a seat a month

Perplexity's comparison article, read 16 October 2026, prints the figure: Enterprise Pro "at a discount of $30/seat per month or $300/seat annually for eligible educational institutions (not covered by our standard Student Program) and nonprofit organizations." You apply through Perplexity Support, which determines eligibility.

The Perplexity API is billed separately

Pro and Max include no API credits. The comparison article lists the API Platform on its own terms: "Pay-as-you-go pricing: Buy credits or set up auto top-off", "No complimentary API credits" and "No access to advanced models or Pro features within the web/app interface".

On Perplexity's API pricing page, read 16 October 2026, the Search API costs "$5 per 1,000 requests" with "no token costs", or $1.00 per 1,000 with Fast Search. The Agent API uses "token-based pricing at each model's published rates", for models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI and others, and the web_search tool adds "$0.0025 per invocation". If a page quotes "Sonar API" token prices, check it against the docs, which now carry a "Migrate from Sonar" page. If you plan to build your own research agent, price it on Perplexity's API pricing page.

Which Perplexity plan should you pick?

Match the plan to the week you actually have. Prices are as of October 2026.

Occasional cited answers: Free. $0 buys 3 Pro Searches a day and 1 Research query a month, and ordinary searches never touch the credit meter. If that rarely runs out, stay.

Verified students and faculty at a university-level institution: Education Pro. $10 a month buys every Pro feature once SheerID clears you.

Research most days: Pro. $17 a month on annual billing gets Deep Research, premium data sources and your choice of model. Read the total at checkout first, since no Perplexity page I read prints another Pro price.

Heavy Computer and Deep Research use: Max. Start at $200 a month, then move to $2,000 a year on perplexity.ai once you are sure, which saves $400. Upgrade on the web; the mobile app opens a second subscription.

A team that needs SSO and a no-training guarantee: Enterprise Pro. $34 a seat a month, billed annually. Move only the people who hit 400 Pro Searches a week onto Enterprise Max at $271 a seat.

Search inside your own product: the API. The Search API costs $5 per 1,000 requests, on its own bill.

If ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini is also on your shortlist, our ChatGPT pricing explainer, Claude pricing explained and Gemini pricing explained lay out their plans the same way. For calendar and inbox help as well as research, our roundup of AI personal assistant apps covers the tools built for that.

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