Perplexity launches $200/month Max plan

Perplexity, the rising star in AI-powered search, is upping the stakes with the launch of Perplexity Max, a $200-per-month subscription designed for its most dedicated users. Announced in a company blog post Tuesday, the new plan grants subscribers early access to experimental features, advanced tools, and cutting-edge AI models.

The Max tier includes unlimited access to Perplexity’s Labs — a toolset for generating spreadsheets and reports — and priority use of the latest frontier models such as OpenAI’s o3-pro and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4. Subscribers will also be among the first to try Comet, Perplexity’s forthcoming AI-powered web browser.

This move places Perplexity in a growing club of AI companies introducing hyper-premium subscriptions for professionals and power users. OpenAI led the charge with its $200/month ChatGPT Pro plan, and others like Google, Anthropic, and Cursor have recently followed suit.

Perplexity’s pricing now spans a broad spectrum: the standard Pro plan at $20/month for general consumers, Enterprise Pro at $40/month per seat for teams, and now the new $200/month Max plan. An enterprise version of Max is also in the pipeline, the company says.

Despite its growing user base, Perplexity is still navigating the high costs of running a cutting-edge AI platform. The company pulled in around $34 million in revenue in 2024 — mostly from its $20/month Pro subscribers — but burned through nearly twice that amount ($65 million), largely on cloud infrastructure and licensing AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Nonetheless, Perplexity appears to be scaling rapidly. Its annual recurring revenue reportedly hit $80 million in January 2025, and it has been in talks to raise $500 million at a staggering $14 billion valuation. Whether that funding round has closed remains unknown.

But Perplexity’s ascent won’t go uncontested. Google is aggressively promoting AI mode — its own Perplexity-style search enhancement — while OpenAI has doubled down on integrating search into ChatGPT and is rumored to be developing a browser of its own.

As the AI search race heats up, Perplexity’s ability to deliver high-performance tools while maintaining close partnerships with model providers like OpenAI and Anthropic could be key. The additional revenue from Max subscribers may not just help cover infrastructure costs — it might give the company the financial muscle it needs to outpace its much larger rivals.