Perplexity Statistics (2026): Users, Market Share and 63 Key Stats

A data roundup of how big Perplexity is, how its share of AI referrals has moved, how people use its Comet and Computer agents, and how it crawls the web, from Perplexity’s own announcements and research, Statcounter, Cloudflare and the HTTP Archive.

Perplexity is a smaller answer engine than ChatGPT or Gemini, but it is the one that shows its sources. In September 2026 it sent 5.85% of AI chatbot referrals to websites worldwide, per Statcounter, third behind ChatGPT and Gemini and down from a 12.07% peak in April 2025 (Statcounter). Perplexity’s own research shows its users increasingly hand whole tasks to agents: its Computer agent cut estimated task time by 87% in a June 2026 study (Perplexity). If buyers in your category research on Perplexity, these numbers explain why it pays to track Perplexity separately.

Key takeaways

• 5.85% of worldwide AI chatbot referrals came from Perplexity in September 2026, third behind ChatGPT and Gemini (Statcounter)
• 12.07% was Perplexity’s peak share in April 2025; it fell over 40% from that peak by March 2026 (Statcounter)
• 169 million queries a month in April 2024, up from 10 million monthly active users at the start of 2024 (Perplexity, Perplexity)
• $165 million raised and a valuation over $1 billion by April 2024 (Perplexity)
• 57% of Comet agent activity is cognitive work such as productivity and research (Perplexity)
• 87% less task time and 94% lower estimated cost with Perplexity Computer versus Search plus manual work (Perplexity)
• 2.8% of desktop sites name perplexitybot in robots.txt (HTTP Archive)

How many people use Perplexity?

1. 10 million monthly active users by January 2024, a year after Perplexity launched its answer engine (Perplexity).
2. Over half a billion queries served in 2023 (Perplexity).
3. More than a million people had installed Perplexity’s iOS and Android apps by January 2024 (Perplexity).
4. 169 million queries per month by April 2024 (Perplexity).
5. More than 335M customers across SoftBank and Deutsche Telekom, the two telecom partners Perplexity signed in April 2024 to market its product (Perplexity).
6. Thousands of U.S. federal employees use Perplexity each day, per its September 2025 government announcement (Perplexity).

What is Perplexity’s share of AI referrals?

7. 5.85% of worldwide AI chatbot referrals to websites came from Perplexity in September 2026 (Statcounter).
8. 80.48% went to ChatGPT and 10.91% to Google Gemini in the same month, so Perplexity ranked third (Statcounter).
9. 3.02% of U.S. AI chatbot referrals came from Perplexity in September 2026, fourth behind ChatGPT (75.17%), Gemini (13.26%) and Microsoft Copilot (6.64%) (Statcounter).
10. 12.07% was Perplexity’s peak worldwide share, in April 2025, when it held a clear second place (Statcounter).
11. 7.07% by March 2026, a decline of over 40% from that peak (Statcounter).
12. 8.65% for Gemini in March 2026, when it overtook Perplexity for second place for the first time (Statcounter).
13. 7.73% in April 2026, a brief rebound from 7.07% in March (Statcounter).

How much has Perplexity raised?

14. $73.6 million Series B, announced January 4, 2024 and led by IVP (Perplexity).
15. $100 million raised in total after the Series B (Perplexity).
16. $62.7 million more raised in April 2024 (Perplexity).
17. Over $1 billion valuation after that round, double its previous valuation (Perplexity).
18. $165 million in total funding by April 2024 (Perplexity).

What does Perplexity cost?

19. $40 a month or $400 a year per seat was the launch price of Enterprise Pro, Perplexity’s first business plan, in April 2024 (Perplexity).
20. $5 a month for Comet Plus, a standalone subscription that pays publishers; Pro and Max subscribers get it included (Perplexity).
21. $0.25 nominal cost for Enterprise Pro for Government, offered to U.S. agencies in September 2025 (Perplexity).
22. $5.00 per 1,000 requests for the Perplexity Search API’s raw web results (Perplexity docs).
23. $2.50 per 1,000 invocations for the standard web_search tool in Perplexity’s Agent API (Perplexity docs).

How do people use Perplexity’s AI agents?

These figures come from a Harvard and Perplexity study of hundreds of millions of anonymized Comet browser interactions between July and October 2025.

24. 57% of all agent activity focuses on cognitive work (Perplexity).
25. 36% of agentic queries are productivity and workflow tasks, the largest topic (Harvard and Perplexity).
26. 21% of common agent tasks are learning and research (Perplexity).
27. 55% of agentic queries are personal use, 30% professional and 16% educational (Harvard and Perplexity).
28. 55% of queries fall into the top 10 of 90 task types (Harvard and Perplexity).
29. 22% of agentic queries are courses or shopping for goods, the two largest subtopics (Harvard and Perplexity).
30. 70% of agent activity comes from six core occupations (Perplexity).
31. 30% of agent queries come from digital technologists, the largest group (Perplexity).
32. 28% of agent adopters work in digital technology (Harvard and Perplexity).
33. 14% of adopters and 15% of queries come from software engineers, the largest subcluster (Harvard and Perplexity).
34. 47% of finance professionals’ agent queries are productivity tasks (Perplexity).
35. 43% of students’ agent tasks are learning and research (Perplexity).
36. 80% of professional agentic queries are productivity- or career-related (Harvard and Perplexity).
37. 89% of educational agentic queries are about learning (Harvard and Perplexity).
38. Nine times as many agentic queries come from an average first-cohort Comet user as from a user who joined at general availability (Harvard and Perplexity).
39. About 30% of Comet users were early adopters, but they made 70% of agentic queries and were about 50% of agent adopters (Harvard and Perplexity).
40. 64% of agentic queries happen on just 16 websites, and 43% on the top 5 (Harvard and Perplexity).
41. 93% of professional-networking agent queries happen on linkedin.com (Harvard and Perplexity).
42. 23% better performance for the new Comet Assistant than its predecessor, per Perplexity’s internal tests (Perplexity).

How does Perplexity Computer change the work?

Perplexity Computer launched on February 25, 2026. These figures are from Perplexity’s June 2026 study of how it is used.

43. 84× their first-week total: cumulative Computer queries by May 27, 2026 (Perplexity).
44. 1.05 more Search queries per day from Computer users than from matched non-Computer users (Perplexity).
45. 25.8% of Computer queries are research and analysis, the largest task category, followed by document and asset creation at 18.6% (Perplexity).
46. 48× more machine work: 26 minutes per Computer session versus 33 seconds for Search (Perplexity).
47. 87% reduction in task time versus Search plus manual work (Perplexity).
48. 94% lower estimated task cost on average (Perplexity).
49. 55% less next-turn dissatisfaction: 1.3% for Computer versus 2.9% for Search (Perplexity).
50. 13% of Computer queries pause to ask the user, versus 0.3% of Search queries (Perplexity).
51. 7.9% of Computer sessions call at least one connector, versus 1.8% of Search sessions (Perplexity).
52. 76% of Computer queries require higher-order thinking, versus 55% for Search (Perplexity).
53. 59% of the time, Computer users work outside their main occupation, versus 50% on Search (Perplexity).

How does Perplexity crawl the web?

54. 20 to 25 million daily requests from Perplexity’s declared Perplexity-User crawler in Cloudflare’s tests (Cloudflare).
55. 3 to 6 million daily requests from an undeclared crawler impersonating Chrome on macOS, which Cloudflare attributed to Perplexity (Cloudflare).
56. Tens of thousands of domains saw that stealth crawling, per Cloudflare (Cloudflare).
57. 194 pages crawled for every visitor Perplexity referred in July 2025 (Cloudflare).
58. 256.7% rise in Perplexity’s crawl-to-refer ratio between January and July 2025 (Cloudflare).
59. 157,490% growth in PerplexityBot’s raw requests over the year to May 2025, the fastest of any crawler, from a 0.2% share (Cloudflare).
60. 2.8% of desktop sites and 2.7% of mobile sites name perplexitybot in their robots.txt file (HTTP Archive).

For the wider crawler picture, see our AI crawler statistics; for the other engines, ChatGPT statistics and Gemini statistics.

What to do with this data

Perplexity’s share of AI referrals is smaller and falling, but its users are research-heavy and it cites sources by name. That makes it a high-intent engine to check, not the only one.

• Track Perplexity next to ChatGPT and Gemini. Each engine cites different sources, so a blended score hides gaps. Mentionova tracks Perplexity from its $99 Starter plan and all six engines on Scale, and its agents draft the content that wins the citation back. See Mentionova pricing and the best Perplexity tracking tools.
• Watch Gemini’s rise. Gemini passed Perplexity in referral share in March 2026. Our Gemini tracking tools guide covers tools that watch both.
• Decide your crawler policy on purpose. If you block PerplexityBot, Perplexity can still answer from other sites that mention you. Make sure those pages describe you accurately.
• Write for agents, not just readers. With agents doing research and shopping tasks, clear pricing, plan limits and comparison pages are what an agent can act on. See AI visibility tools for the full shortlist.

Frequently asked questions

How many people use Perplexity?

Perplexity reported 10 million monthly active users in January 2024 and 169 million queries a month by April 2024, its most recent figures on its own blog. It has not published a newer monthly user count there; Statcounter shows it sent 5.85% of AI chatbot referrals worldwide in September 2026.

Is Perplexity growing or shrinking?

Its share of AI referrals is shrinking. Perplexity peaked at 12.07% of worldwide AI chatbot referrals in April 2025 and fell to 5.85% by September 2026, per Statcounter, as Gemini grew past it. Its agent products are growing: Computer queries reached 84 times their first-week total within three months.

What is Perplexity’s market share?

In September 2026, Statcounter put Perplexity at 5.85% of worldwide AI chatbot referrals, behind ChatGPT at 80.48% and Gemini at 10.91%. In the U.S. it was fourth at 3.02%, behind ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot.

How much funding has Perplexity raised?

Perplexity’s own announcements list a $73.6 million Series B in January 2024 and another $62.7 million in April 2024, bringing total funding to $165 million and its valuation to over $1 billion at that time.

Should brands track their visibility in Perplexity?

Yes, if your buyers research before they buy. Perplexity shows numbered citations, so you can see exactly which pages it trusts. Track it as its own engine alongside ChatGPT and Gemini; tools such as Mentionova report each engine separately and suggest fixes.

How we compiled these statistics

We fetched 17 primary source pages on October 21, 2026 and recorded 63 data points in docs/content/stats-ledgers/perplexity-statistics.json. Every numbered figure above maps to a ledger row with a verbatim quote. Usage, funding, pricing and agent figures are Perplexity’s own statements on its blog and API docs, plus the Harvard and Perplexity research paper on Comet. Referral shares come from Statcounter Global Stats; crawling figures from Cloudflare and the HTTP Archive Web Almanac. Company figures are self-reported and not independently audited, and older Perplexity figures (2024) are labelled with their dates because Perplexity has not updated them on its blog. Sources: Perplexity Series B, Perplexity Enterprise Pro launch, How AI agents reshape knowledge work, How people use AI agents, Introducing Comet Plus, Perplexity for Government, The new Comet Assistant, Harvard and Perplexity, The Adoption and Usage of AI Agents, Statcounter AI chatbot market share, Statcounter, United States, Statcounter, April 2026 release, Statcounter, March 2026 release, Cloudflare on Perplexity stealth crawling, Cloudflare crawl-to-click, Cloudflare crawlers 2025, HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025 SEO, Perplexity API pricing. Related reading: AI search statistics, Google AI Overviews statistics, SEO tools.