The sudden introduction of Perplexity AI into the research market revolutionizes access to advanced AI research tools. Perplexity AI offers this advanced research tool at an affordable price which remains substantially below genuine market value. People may begin to question how major AI companies would define their pricing strategies.
Challenging the Status Quo
Deep learning research tools were once solely accessible to major investors. The monthly fees for AI services from companies such as OpenAI or Anthropic exceed thousands of dollars. Perplexity Deep Research completely overturns traditional AI research paradigms. The tool works with a freemium business model: five queries are free for every user. The $20 monthly fee offers users 500 daily queries and enhanced processing speed. These firms need to justify why their pricing appears excessive when analyzed against such pricing structures.
Performance That Speaks Volumes
Even after considering everything, Deep Research meets expected standards. The Deep Research tool managed to reach 93.9% accuracy in the SimpleQA benchmark but only 20.5% in Humanity’s Last Exam. Deep Research from OpenAI leads the field with a 26.6% score yet charges significantly more than Google’s Gemini Thinking.
Redefining Accessibility in AI

The pricing strategy of Perplexity is designed to bridge the gap between advanced AI research and broad accessibility. The company provides an appliance for complex financial analysis or healthcare insights that operates at consumer-friendly prices. Perplexity enables small businesses and independent professionals to break free from the limitations of expensive barriers.
Implications for the AI Industry
The introduction of Deep Research may lead AI service providers to reassess their pricing strategies for all customer service offerings. Perplexity demonstrates that its AI research tool delivers affordable high-performance results which will likely compel competitors to reassess their model strategies for maintaining competitiveness. This change could bring authentic democratization to AI research development by driving innovation and including more diverse participants.
To give it a try, first go to perplexity.ai and select “Deep Research” from the mode selector in the search box before submitting your query.
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