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The answer engine solo founders use for cited research — now with Deep Research, model choice and a Computer agent on paid plans
The strongest research-first general assistant for a solo founder — the catch is unpublished usage quotas and a 10x cliff to Max.
Perplexity is the cited-research assistant: every answer shows its sources, and Pro adds Deep Research, a multi-provider model picker and the Computer agent for $17-$20/month.
Your general-assistant work is mostly questions that need trustworthy, sourced answers — market checks, supplier comparisons, regulation lookups — plus occasional deep reports.
You need countable usage to budget around (quotas are unpublished), or your work is long-document writing and inbox operations rather than research.
Workflows are built only from verified capabilities in our listing research — no vendor copy, nothing invented.
Starts You ask about a competitor, a price change or a regulation
You get A sourced answer you can defend in a decision
Approval Check the cited sources before acting on any consequential claim
Research stops being an afternoon of tabs
Starts You hand a multi-part question to Deep Research on a paid plan
You get A structured research report with sources
Consultant-style desk research without the consultant invoice
Starts A writing job suits one provider's model and a reasoning job another's
You get Multi-provider answers under one $17-$20 bill
You stop paying for three assistant subscriptions to cover three strengths
Starts You give Perplexity Computer a job that spans apps and files on a paid plan
You get A polished document or app from a brief
Approval Review Computer output before it leaves the business
Agent work sits inside the research tool you already open daily
Run the supplier check or competitor question you actually face and judge the citations, not the fluency.
Pro at $17/month billed annually is the solo pick; the features that earn it are Deep Research, top models and Computer access.
The pricing page states 400+ app connectors on paid plans — connect the few you live in rather than everything.
Time to first useful result: Under 1 hour · no-code 5/5
Free tier; Pro is $17/month billed annually ($20/month billed monthly) and is the realistic solo plan; Max at $167/month billed annually ($200 monthly) buys frontier models and maximum Computer usage.
$0/month
Per seat / month · $0/mo for one person
$17/month when billed annually
Per seat / month · $17/mo for one person
$20/month billed monthly
Per seat / month · $20/mo for one person
$167/month when billed annually ($200/month billed monthly)
Per seat / month · $167/mo for one person
| Plan | Published price | Solo monthly | Billed by | Limits & overage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | $0/mo | Per seat / month | Good for limited daily usage · Better for simple questions |
| Pro (billed annually)Solo pick | $17/month when billed annually | $17/mo | Per seat / month | Frontier models and maximum Computer usage are Max-only · Usage allowances are described as expanded, not published as numbers |
| Pro (billed monthly) | $20/month billed monthly | $20/mo | Per seat / month | $3/month more than the annual rate over a year |
| Max (billed annually) | $167/month when billed annually ($200/month billed monthly) | $167/mo | Per seat / month | Priced for the hardest problems — most solo founders never need it |
The jump is a cliff: there is no plan between Pro at $20/month and Max at $200/month, and because Pro Search and research quotas are unpublished, you find out you need Max by hitting a wall, not by watching a meter.
Price record · 2026-11-06: Checked 2026-11-06 on perplexity.ai/hub/pricing: the page was read directly this run — Free $0 with citations and basic models; Pro shown at $17/month when billed annually with expanded Computer access, 4,000 bonus credits, Deep Research and top-model selection; Max shown at $167/month when billed annually with 10,000 monthly Computer credits, frontier models and the highest limits. The monthly-billing figures (Pro $20/month, Max $200/month) are corroborated by multiple dated October-November 2026 reads of the same official page. Perplexity does not publish numeric quotas for Pro Search, research or general usage on any tier — allowances are described as limited, expanded or highest only, and are recorded here as unpublished rather than estimated.
The same fields on every deep listing in this job, so agents compare field by field. “Not verified” means our research has not confirmed it yet — it never means “doesn't have it.”
Perplexity is the assistant a solo founder opens when the answer has to come with receipts. Every reply is built from live web search and carries citations, so checking a market claim, a supplier's pricing, a regulation or a competitor's launch takes minutes instead of an afternoon of tabs — and you can see exactly which sources the answer rests on before you act on it. The paid plans widen that core in three useful directions. Pro adds a picker of top models from several providers, so the same subscription covers different strengths without separate accounts; Deep Research turns a hard question into a structured report; and Perplexity Computer gives you an agent layer that can work through multi-step jobs, create polished documents and apps, and connect to hundreds of apps. File uploads let you ask questions of your own documents alongside the web, and Spaces-style organisation keeps a topic's threads and files together. The honest limits matter for budgeting: Perplexity describes paid usage as expanded or highest without publishing numeric quotas for Pro Search, research or Computer work beyond the stated Computer credits, so how far $20 goes in a heavy research month is something you learn by using it, not from the pricing page. It is also, at heart, a research and answers tool — it will inform a decision brilliantly, but it is not a helpdesk, an inbox manager or a bookkeeping system.
Solo Fit stays the public score: the qualitative roll-up of these four published inputs under the How We Rank method. Cited answers and the model picker carry it; pricing clarity is honest about flat prices but unpublished usage quotas.
The difference: The broader generalist — custom GPTs, scheduled tasks, Work and Codex — the catch is its research answers are not citation-first the way Perplexity's are.
The difference: The long-document and careful-writing specialist with Projects — the catch is no built-in cited web answer engine as the core product.
The difference: A fully autonomous agent that executes multi-step jobs in its own cloud computer — the catch is credit pricing where a task's cost is only known after it runs.
Free is $0. Pro is $17/month billed annually or $20/month billed monthly, and it is the realistic solo plan. Max is $167/month billed annually or $200/month billed monthly. The directory's True Solo Cost is $17 low (Pro annual) and $20 typical (Pro monthly).
Perplexity does not publish them. The pricing page describes Free as limited, Pro as expanded or more, and Max as highest, and it states Computer credits (4,000 one-time bonus credits on Pro; 10,000 per month on Max) — but no numeric quotas for Pro Search or research are published for any tier, so this listing records them as unpublished rather than guessing.
The pricing page read on 2026-11-06 displays the annual-billing figures ($17/month for Pro, $167/month for Max). The monthly figures ($20 and $200) are corroborated by multiple dated October-November 2026 reads of the same official page, the same corroborated-dated-reads treatment this directory uses when a figure does not extract cleanly.
For cited search on simple questions, yes — citations and basic models are included free. Deep Research, the top-model picker and Computer access are what the paid plans add.
Perplexity is not in a published stack yet — stacks are edited buying guides, and memberships are added only when the combination has been worked through.
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