STOA's verdictFor builders
Best for small businesses with a developer on staff who want to embed live, web-sourced AI answers into a custom app or internal tool.
The biggest pro is that responses are grounded in real-time web data, so you avoid the stale-information problem common with standard LLMs. The main con is that this is a raw API — there's no point-and-click interface, so non-technical owners can't use it without developer help.
For builders · not rated for ownersWhy no rating
Perplexity API needs a developer to set up and use, so we don't give it an owner rating. Here is how each factor looks for a small team that has a developer.
- SMB Fit
You pay per use: the Search API lists $5.00 per 1K requests and the Router API bills per token with no per-request fees.docs.perplexity.ai (source, opens in a new tab)
