Perplexity adds a Max tier just as expensive as its rivals

Perplexity has added another subscription tier, one that the company calls its “most powerful.” And it’s got a price tag to match.

Announced by the Nvidia- and Jeff Bezos-backed company in a Wednesday blog post, Perplexity Max is the new premium offering for the AI search engine. An upgrade for the existing Perplexity Pro tier, Max is now available on iOS and web app, coming soon to Android.

As well as everything included in Pro, Max includes unlimited use of Labs (the AI tool that can generate projects like reports, presentations, and simple web apps in about 10 minutes), early access to new features like the upcoming Comet agentic search browser, access to advanced AI models like Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 and OpenAI o3-pro and “priority support” for these models.

Reader, it’s not cheap. Perplexity Max costs $200 per month or $2,000 a year; the tier down, Perplexity Pro, costs $20 per month or $200 per year. It’s the same monthly price as the top tier of OpenAI’s offering, ChatGPT Pro; in comparison, the most expensive tier of Google’s AI, Gemini, is Google AI Ultra, which costs $249.99 per month.

The company says Perplexity Max is for “professionals…content creators…business strategists….and academic researchers.” Users can upgrade their subscription at Settings > Account > Subscription > Upgrade Plan.

Perplexity has been making more than few headlines of late, with the BBC threatening legal action over allegedly unauthorised content use and reports that Apple may be looking to acquire Perplexity.

Disclosure: This article mentions OpenAI. Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.