Best for: Fast cited overviews of a topic across the web and academic sources
Price: Freemium · from $20/month
Free: Unlimited basic searches with limited Research access
Platforms: Web, iOS, Android
Made by: Perplexity AI, San Francisco, USA · since 2022
App store ratings: iOS 4.8★ (513K) · Android 4.6★ (2.17M)

What it is

Perplexity answers questions with numbered citations from the web, and its Research mode runs many searches to produce structured reports you can export as documents or PDFs. An Academic source option steers results towards peer-reviewed papers, and you can upload your own files.

What the AI does

Research mode with multi-step cited reports
Academic source filter
File uploads and questions about your documents
Choice of AI models on Pro
Export reports as documents or PDFs

Pros and cons

Quick, readable reports with sources on every claim
Academic filter for peer-reviewed results
Cheap Education Pro plan for students
Excellent apps on every platform

Citations can sound confident but not say what's claimed
Not a reproducible literature search for systematic reviews
May only read parts of long uploaded documents

How it scores

Research quality8

Ease of use9.5

Features7.5

Value for money8

Platforms9.5

The easiest way to get a cited research overview; reports still need checking against the originals.

Feature checklist · 5 of 9

Searches a large database of academic papers (yes)
Answers from your own uploaded PDFs and documents (yes)
Inline citations linked to the exact source (yes)
Multi-step deep research reports (yes)
Extracts details from papers into tables (no)
Shows whether studies support or contradict a claim (no)
Discovers related papers through citations or recommendations (no)
Exports citations or connects to Zotero (no)
Useful free plan (yes)

How we score apps →

Alternatives

See all Perplexity alternatives, ranked →

Gemini Notebook 8.8/10Students and researchers who already have their sources and want to understand, question and summarise them
Consensus 8.3/10Students, clinicians and anyone checking what the research says about a specific question
ChatGPT deep research 8.0/10Professionals who want a thorough written briefing on a complex topic
Elicit 7.8/10Researchers running systematic reviews or extracting data across many studies