> ## 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.

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.

Our dedicated developer [documentation](https://docs.perplexity.ai/getting-started/overview) lets you start building in minutes. Learn more on the [API Platform](https://www.perplexity.ai/api-platform) page, and [create an account](https://console.perplexity.ai/) to get started.

## What you can build with

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

**Search API** — 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.

**Embeddings API** — generate high-quality embeddings for semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines.

## Getting started

**Step 1**

Create an account and sign in to the [API Console](https://console.perplexity.ai/).

**Step 2**

Add a payment method and buy credits in the Billing tab.

**Step 3**

Generate an API key in the API Keys tab.

**Step 4**

Make your first call using the [Agent API Quickstart](https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/agent-api/quickstart).

Note: API Credits are separate from [Computer Credits](https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/help-center/en/articles/13838041-how-credits-work-on-perplexity.md).


## Related topics

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