Perplexity free plan limits 2026: 3 Pro Searches a day and 1 Research a month
Updated: 10 hours ago
Updated: November 7, 2026
Perplexity's free plan costs $0 and includes practically unlimited basic searches, 3 Pro Searches per day and 1 Research query per month. Free users cannot pick an advanced model by hand, cannot generate images, cannot use the Comet Assistant browser agent, cannot use file and app creation and cannot create Teammates, the always-on agents Perplexity launched on November 4, 2026 for Max subscribers only. File uploads are allowed within a limited allowance that refills on a rolling weekly basis. These figures come from Perplexity's plan comparison and product articles in its Help Center and from its pricing page, all checked on November 7, 2026.
The free tier is built for search with citations. Each answer shows its sources, search history is kept, and the system chooses the model for every query through the Best setting. The paid tiers change the type of limit as well as the amount: Pro and Max replace the daily and monthly free counters with weekly and monthly allowances sized for average or advanced use, and they add model selection, image generation and access to Perplexity Computer, while Max adds monthly Computer credits and Teammates.
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Feature | Perplexity Free |
Price | $0 |
Basic searches | Practically unlimited |
Pro Searches | 3 per day |
Research | 1 per month |
Model choice | Automatic (Best), no manual selection |
File uploads | Limited, rolling weekly allowance, 40 MB per file |
Image generation | Not included |
Comet Assistant | Not included |
File and app creation | Not included |
Teammates | Not included (Max only) |
Support | Basic |
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The Free allowance for file uploads is not published as a number. Perplexity states only that every plan has a weekly upload allowance, that images and files attached from connected apps count toward it and that the remaining balance is not shown in account settings.
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WHAT THE PERPLEXITY FREE PLAN INCLUDES IN 2026.
The core of the free plan is the standard search box. A basic search returns a cited answer, and Perplexity describes the free tier on its pricing page as search only with accurate answers and citations, access to basic AI models and good for limited daily usage. Search history is available to free accounts, so earlier threads can be reopened and continued.
Pro Search is the deeper search mode that pulls from more sources and spends more reasoning on a question, and on Free it is capped at 3 per day. Research, the longer report-style mode that runs many searches before writing an answer, is capped at 1 query per month on Free. Our comparison of Perplexity Search, Pro Search, Research and Computer explains what each of these modes does and when the extra depth is useful.
The free plan has no access to image generation or to the file and app creation tools that build documents, dashboards and small apps. The Comet Assistant, the browser agent that works inside Perplexity's Comet browser, is listed as not included for Free. Support is basic on Free, priority on Pro and dedicated on Max, and on data privacy the paid consumer plans add an opt-out from AI training that the plan comparison does not list for Free.
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PERPLEXITY FREE VS PRO VS MAX: LIMITS SIDE BY SIDE.
Perplexity does not publish exact Pro or Max counters for consumer accounts. Its plan comparison describes Pro limits as sized for average use and Max limits as sized for advanced use, with Pro Searches and file uploads measured per week and Research, Comet Assistant and file and app creation measured per month. Enterprise plans are the only ones with published numbers, such as 400 Pro Searches a week on Enterprise Pro and 4,000 on Enterprise Max.
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Item | Free | Pro | Max |
Price | $0 | $17/month billed annually | $200/month or $2,000/year |
Pro Searches | 3 per day | Weekly limit (average use) | Weekly limit (advanced use) |
Research | 1 per month | Monthly limit (average use) | Monthly limit (advanced use) |
Comet Assistant | Not included | Monthly limit (average use) | Monthly limit (advanced use) |
Search models | Best only | 7 of 11 listed models | All 11 listed models |
Computer | Free turns on some accounts | Weekly included usage, 4,000 bonus credits | 10,000 credits a month, 35,000 bonus |
Teammates | Not included | Not included | Included (research preview, web) |
File uploads | Limited weekly | Weekly (average use) | Weekly (advanced use) |
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The Pro price shown is the annual-billing rate on Perplexity's pricing page, which works out to $204 a year. The public pages checked for this update do not list the Pro price for month-to-month billing, so the exact monthly figure appears only at checkout. Max costs $200 a month or $2,000 a year according to the Max Help Center article, the pricing page shows the annual rate as $167 a month, and annual Max billing is available only in the web app. Education Pro costs $10 a month after verification. The full plan list, including Enterprise Pro from $40 per seat per month, is in our Perplexity pricing guide.
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PERPLEXITY TEAMMATES: THE NEW AGENTS FREE USERS CANNOT CREATE.
Teammates are AI agents that take ownership of an ongoing job, such as triaging bug reports, tracking metrics or researching a market, and keep working on it across sessions. Perplexity introduced them on November 4, 2026 and describes them as built on Perplexity Computer: each teammate keeps project goals, task history and shared files between runs, can monitor connected tools such as Slack, GitHub and Linear, and runs in its own isolated environment with separate browser sessions.
Access is limited to individual Max subscribers in a research preview on the web, with iOS announced as coming later. Perplexity's Help Center says Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max are not included by default, although enterprise accounts can request access through their organization admin. Free and Pro users see an upgrade path to Max under Settings, Account, Subscription.
Teammates draw on the Max plan's monthly credit allocation, and Perplexity warns that parallel agents, large files or codebases and frequent automations consume more credits. Max accounts have a default monthly spending cap of $200 on Computer usage, adjustable up to $5,000, and usage can be checked on the account's Usage page. Our report on the Teammates launch for Max users covers the agents' features and use cases in more detail.
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PERPLEXITY FREE PLAN MODELS, FILE UPLOADS AND COMPUTER TURNS.
Model access is the clearest difference between the tiers. Perplexity's model article says free users get Best, which picks a model for each query, plus their limited Pro Searches, and that they cannot choose an advanced Search model manually. Pro can select 7 models in Search: GPT-6.1 Sol, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Claude Sonnet 5.5, Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, Grok 4.7 and Nemotron 3.5 Super VL. Max adds GPT-6 Astra, Gemini 4 Argon, Claude Opus 5.5 and Claude Fable 5.1, along with Model Council on the web. Perplexity adds that the model selector in the account is the final authority and that the list can change. The current lineup is covered in our guide to which models Perplexity uses.
File uploads work on Free, with the same 40 MB size cap per file that applies to every file type on every plan. The allowance is what differs, and it is counted on a rolling basis: each upload stops counting about one week after it was attached, so capacity returns gradually instead of on a fixed reset day. When the allowance is used up, Perplexity shows a pop-up the next time a file is attached. Supported formats include plain text, code, PDFs, images, audio and video, with audio and video transcribed into searchable text.
Perplexity Computer, the assistant that carries out multi-step tasks, runs on credits that the free plan does not receive. Perplexity says some free accounts include a limited number of free Computer turns, where a turn is one message sent to Computer plus its reply, follow-ups included. These turns are a one-time allowance that does not reset and does not use credits, they run one agent at a time, and when they run out mid-task the task is saved and can be resumed after an upgrade. Ask searches and the Comet Assistant in Search mode do not consume credits on any plan.
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HOW PERPLEXITY FREE LIMITS RESET AND HOW TO CHECK THEM.
The free plan's Pro Search counter is daily and its Research counter is monthly, while the upload allowance is rolling and weekly. Perplexity's Help Center does not state the exact time of day when the daily Pro Search count resets, and it does not show the remaining upload allowance in account settings, so the practical signal for a free user is the prompt that appears when a limit is reached.
A free user who reaches the Pro Search cap can keep asking basic searches, which remain practically unlimited. Questions that need many sources, comparisons across documents or a long written report are the ones that run into the daily and monthly caps first, because they draw on Pro Search and Research. Spreading those questions across days, or keeping the single monthly Research query for the task that needs it most, keeps a free account usable for heavier work.
Trials and promotions follow separate rules. Perplexity's billing FAQ says a valid credit or debit card is required for all promotional and trial redemptions, that no charges apply during the promotional or trial period and that the subscription renews at the standard rate unless it is cancelled before the period ends. After a paid plan is cancelled, the account stays on the paid tier until the current billing cycle ends and then reverts to the free version.
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WHAT UPGRADING FROM PERPLEXITY FREE COSTS PER YEAR.
The yearly cost of each tier, computed from the official list prices checked on November 7, 2026, shows how far apart the plans sit. Credit values use Perplexity's stated rate of 100 credits for $1.
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Plan | Yearly cost | Computer credits included |
Free | $0 | None (some accounts get free Computer turns) |
Education Pro | $120 ($10 x 12) | Not stated on the plan page |
Pro, billed annually | $204 ($17 x 12) | 4,000 one-time bonus (worth $40) |
Max, billed annually | $2,000 | 10,000 per month (worth $100) plus 35,000 bonus |
Max, billed monthly | $2,400 ($200 x 12) | 10,000 per month plus 35,000 bonus |
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Paying for Max annually instead of monthly saves $400 a year, and only Max includes Teammates. For Computer work, Perplexity's own examples put a multi-step research report at 350 to 950 credits, which is $3.50 to $9.50 at list rate, and a data dashboard at 2,400 to 9,800 credits. The 120,000 monthly credits a Max subscriber receives over a year are worth $1,200 at list rate, and they do not roll over from month to month. Pro's 4,000 bonus credits expire after about 30 days, so a Pro user doing regular Computer tasks relies on the weekly included Computer usage of paid Pro plans, which Perplexity does not count as credits.
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PERPLEXITY FREE PLAN: WHO IT SUITS AND WHERE IT STOPS.
The Perplexity free plan covers everyday cited search with no time limit and no payment details, and it gives a small taste of the deeper modes through 3 Pro Searches a day and 1 Research query a month. Its hard limits are clear from Perplexity's own documentation: no manual model choice, no image generation, no Comet Assistant, no file and app creation, no Teammates and no Computer credits beyond the one-time free turns some accounts receive.
What Perplexity leaves unpublished is the size of the free upload allowance, the exact reset time of the daily Pro Search count, the numeric weekly and monthly caps on Pro and Max and the number of free Computer turns. A free user who regularly hits the 3-a-day Pro Search ceiling or needs more than one Research report a month is the person the $17-a-month annual Pro plan is aimed at, while Max at $200 a month targets heavy Computer use, frontier models and the new Teammates agents.
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