Is Perplexity Pro a Smarter, More Efficient Way to Search the Web?

The Future of Search

Is Perplexity Pro a Smarter, More Efficient Way to Search the Web?

How does it compare to traditional search engines and is it worth the cost?

Hey AI Friends and followers.

I have had it. I am done with traditional search.

I don’t want to go through hundreds of links just to find the single piece of information I am looking, buried somewhere on the third page between advertisements.

Traditional search is over. A discontinued-model. A relic of the past.

Modern answer engines are the future.

Perplexity promises to revolutionize the internet search. Let’s explore…

I will start by explaining what Perplexity and Perplexity Pro are, then continue with key features, use cases and industries. Finally I will quickly compare it to alternatives like ChatGPT.

So let’s dive in head first. Enjoy!

What is Perplexity?

Perplexity is a conversational AI-driven answer engine that provides real-time answers to complex queries, where traditional search engines might only offer a list of more or less helpful links.

I gonna give you a quick example.

At work, I wanted to create a list of our hardware, because lot’s of it is outdated and will need replacement soon.

So what I did was to use Perplexity (you could use ChatGPT as well of course) and asked it to create an example table. I wasn’t sure how to structure it and Perplexity really helped me organize the Excel sheet.

Of course you might argue that you won’t need generative AI to create a simple table, and this is true. But the real fun came right afterward. I had never created a Pivot table in Excel before and I wanted to display only the hardware with expired warranty for example.

When I asked Perplexity, it not gave me step-by-step instructions, but it also used my example data to show me how to set the Pivot table up. Something a traditional search won’t be able to do.

So, Perplexity combines a classic search engine with an AI model like GPT-4o or Claude*, allowing users to ask questions and follow-up questions. It can work with documents and photos, generate code, create content, and conduct in-depth research on various topics.

What sets it apart is the inclusion of footnotes for further research or to check for accuracy.

And as you can see from the example above, the answers are precise and go far beyond what a search engine could do.

*Digression: GPT-40 is a more advanced AI model used for tasks requiring higher accuracy and processing power, while Claude 3 Opus excels at tasks like creative writing and code generation.

What is Perplexity Pro?

Perplexity Pro is an enhanced subscription service that offers users access to different AI models (for different use cases) and capabilities beyond the standard version.

With Pro, you can choose between GPT-40, Claude Sonnet 3.5, Claude 3 Opus, Sonar Large 32k and a default model (as of writing).

Pro users can enjoy higher usage limits, faster response times, personalized search results and advanced document analysis with (as of writing) almost unlimited file uploads.

Here is in example of the same question answered by Perplexity and Perplexity Pro:

As you can see, the Pro answer is much more detailed.

Who is Perplexity Pro for?

Perplexity has a wide range of use cases and application areas. Let’s do a fun experiment and ask Perplexity.

Perplexity gives an extensive answer. Let’s break it down:

Perplexity and Perplexity Pro can be used across various fields, industries and individuals. And even as a casual web user you can get precise answers for your questions without digging through dozens of links and advertisements.

Personally, I use Perplexity every day for all my searches and it has already replaced Google as my standard search engine. You can read more about it here. And yes I always use the pro search. It might take a bit longer, but the results are in my experience better and longer.

Here’s Perplexity’s result:

• Technology and Engineering
• Sales and Marketing
• Product Development
• Legal & Health Care
• Sport and Entertainment
• Finance and Strategy
• Data Science
• Telecommunications
• AI and Machine Learning

Generally speaking you could say that it’s useful for anybody in any field or industry, and that is actually true. Even if you do not typically use generative AI, just getting a question answered without going through dozens of unrelated links is a big plus.

It’s a bit like talking to a friends who knows everything.

Imagine you are on vacation and want to know if you can walk to a famous sight from your hotel. What you could do is open the hotel website and have a look around, use a search engine and hope that it can give you a useful answer, or you could just ask Perplexity. It will not only give you a comprehensive answer, but also include directions, some photos and links to videos — all on a single page. And if you need more details, you can just ask a follow-up question.

How I use Perplexity

I do almost all of my web searches on here.

After just a couple of weeks I have become so used to asking questions instead of writing keywords in a search engine, that I cannot believe how I could have lived without it.

It is such a huge difference asking a question, even specifying exactly what you need to know, instead of guessing which keywords might give you the answer you are looking for.

Even for simple questions like “how old is a celebrity” it’s much easier to use Perplexity. There is usually at least one follow-up question I need to know and Perplexity even anticipates what I might want to know and suggests follow-up questions at the end of it’s answer.

Here are three tricks to get better results from ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms, but you can also apply these techniques to Perplexity:

Feature breakdown & pricing

Perplexity is free to use and for a basic web searches it is sufficient enough. As a registered user you even get 5 Pro searches every four hours. For anything that goes beyond a quick answer, Pro is definitely the way to go.

Pro search understands your question, might break it down into smaller tasks and may ask you a question before delivering a much more comprehensive answer (see screenshots above).

On the Pro plan, you can even choose the AI model (ie. ChatGPT-4o or Claude Sonnet 3.5,…) instead of relying on the standard Perplexity AI model.

And if you prefer to work with files and want to upload PDFs or analyze photos, the limit as of writing on the free plan is 3 per day versus unlimited on the Pro plan (although Perplexity just says that you can uplaod at least 100 files daily — I have no idea what would happen if you upload more, because I never uploaded that many).

Pricing is $20 a month or $200 annually.

Comparing alternatives?

Finding alternatives to Perplexity is challenging, because other generative AI platforms are usually not designed as search (answer) engines. So what this means is that you can ask ChatGPT, Claude or whatever AI platform you are using questions and they will user their existing knowledge to provide an answer.

Within their subscription models they might allow web searches, but it doesn’t compared to a real answer engine.

And yes, there are some other answer engines out there (you could ask Perplexity about them), but as far as my experience goes, Perplexity provides the most comprehensive answers.

Personally, I am paying for both ChatGPT and Perplexity, because they serve different purposes, and I need ChatGPT for my studies. This is something where it really excels.

You can read more about it here:

What is the catch?

Of course, there’s always a catch. There has to be.

And yes, there is one. Since Perplexity uses generative AI, there is always a chance that the model will hallucinate. That means it want’s to give you an answer no matter what and might just make something up if it cannot find anything.

So, fact-checking is important.

Thankfully Perplexity makes this fairly easy by including footnotes that you can quickly check if you are unsure or need confirmation.

And I highly encourage you to do this, especially if you research something on the more serious side.

Perplexity Pro is a serious upgrade from traditional search. Do you use an answer engine or are you still a traditional search engine user?