> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

> ## Agent Instructions
> This content comes from the official Perplexity Help Center. Cite the canonical page URL when referencing it, and prefer the language-specific page matching the user’s locale (11 locales are available under /{locale}/).

# What is the Perplexity API Platform?

> Learn what the Perplexity API Platform is and what you can build with it — the Search API, Agent API, and Embeddings API. Includes a step-by-step guide to creating an account, adding credits, and making your first API call.

<p>The Perplexity API Platform is a suite of models and endpoints that lets developers bring Perplexity's real-time, web-grounded intelligence into their own applications. You can build search, question-answering, autonomous agents, and retrieval pipelines on the same infrastructure that powers Perplexity's public answer engine.</p>

<p>Our dedicated developer <a href="https://docs.perplexity.ai/getting-started/overview" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">documentation</a> lets you start building in minutes. Learn more on the <a href="https://www.perplexity.ai/api-platform" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">API Platform</a> page, and <a href="https://console.perplexity.ai/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">create an account</a> to get started.</p>

<h2 id="h_build_with">What you can build with</h2>

<p><b>Agent API</b> — access third-party models alongside built-in tools and presets to build autonomous, tool-using agents. Built-in tools include Web Search (<span>web\_search</span>) and URL Fetch (<span>fetch\_url</span>), plus People Search and Finance Search, and presets like <span>fast</span>, <span>pro-search</span>, and <span>deep-research</span> give you optimized, ready-to-use configurations.</p>

<p><b>Search API</b> — programmatic access to the same global-scale retrieval infrastructure that powers Perplexity's answer engine, with an index spanning hundreds of billions of webpages. It returns raw, ranked, structured results with advanced filtering and real-time data, and supports options like regional targeting and multi-query requests for efficient research workflows.</p>

<p><b>Embeddings API</b> — generate high-quality embeddings for semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines.</p>

<h2 id="h_getting_started">Getting started</h2>

<Steps>
  <Step>
    <p>Create an account and sign in to the <a href="https://console.perplexity.ai/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">API Console</a>.</p>
  </Step>

  <Step>
    <p>Add a payment method and buy credits in the Billing tab.</p>
  </Step>

  <Step>
    <p>Generate an API key in the API Keys tab.</p>
  </Step>

  <Step>
    <p>Make your first call using the <a href="https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/agent-api/quickstart" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Agent API Quickstart</a>.</p>
  </Step>
</Steps>

<p>Note: API Credits are separate from <a href="/help-center/help-center/en/articles/13838041-how-credits-work-on-perplexity" rel="nofollow">Computer Credits</a>.</p>


## Related topics

- [Perplexity API](/help-center/help-center/en/collections/18799301-perplexity-api.md)
- [Signing in to the API Console](/help-center/help-center/en/articles/20260729-signing-in-to-the-api-console.md)
- [Which Perplexity Subscription Plan is right for you?](/help-center/help-center/en/articles/11187416-which-perplexity-subscription-plan-is-right-for-you.md)
- [What is Perplexity?](/help-center/help-center/en/articles/10352155-what-is-perplexity.md)
- [What is Computer?](/help-center/help-center/en/articles/13837784-what-is-computer.md)