Perplexity vs. ChatGPT: Which AI tool is better? [2025]

A lot of AI chatbots all feel the same. Sure, they use different models under the hood, but whether you're using ChatGPT, Meta AI, or Google Gemini, the experience is pretty similar. Prompt goes in, generated AI response comes out—which is why Perplexity AI is so interesting. 

Instead of just being another chatbot, Perplexity is billed as an alternative to traditional search engines. Yes, it works kind of like a typical conversational AI chatbot, but it's designed to be more accurate and up to date. So how does this compare to ChatGPT, which has also been held up as a possible replacement for search engines?

I've been using both apps side-by-side for a few months now, so let's look at what sets the two tools apart. And most importantly, whether you should use Perplexity or ChatGPT.

Table of contents:

• Perplexity vs. ChatGPT at a glance

• ChatGPT is a general-purpose chatbot

• Perplexity is designed to find information from the web

• Perplexity can do chatbot things if you push it

• Both apps have lots of cool features

• Both have the same pricing structure

• Perplexity vs. ChatGPT: Which should you choose?

Perplexity vs. ChatGPT at a glance

Perplexity and ChatGPT are both great tools. You'll need to read the full comparison for a proper breakdown of what they both can do, but here's a brief overview.

ChatGPT is a general-purpose chatbot

ChatGPT is the leading example of what an AI chatbot can be. Since launching in 2022, it's been pushing the edge of what large language models (LLMs) and large multimodal models (LMMs) are capable of. It's gone from an interesting novelty to a highly capable productivity tool in a very short time.

You can now source data from ChatGPT, do analysis, and create interactive charts, all in a matter of seconds.

And according to Stack Overflow, four out of five developers now use ChatGPT as a part of their coding workflows. Even non-coders like me can easily use ChatGPT to write and deploy apps and games.

If you haven't played around with it in a while, here are some of the things ChatGPT can do:

• Give answers to factual questions

• Solve logic, math, and other kinds of problems

• Write, troubleshoot, and help with computer code

• Draft emails, social media posts, and any other kind of written communication

• Identify objects from photos

• Create charts, tables, and other ways to display data

• Analyze data from charts and tables

• Translate from one language to another

• Summarize information from uploaded documents

• Converse in a voice chat

• Create multi-page deep research reports on complex topics

• Use your phone's camera to answer live questions about anything

• Act as an autonomous agent to complete tasks on your behalf

In short, ChatGPT is a great general-purpose assistant. While it can do a wide variety of tasks, it doesn't necessarily go as deep into them as dedicated tools. For example, while you can get ChatGPT to generate any kind of text you want, an AI-powered marketing tool like Jasper will give you a lot more options and control, and allow you to generate longer documents, emails, and the like.

So if ChatGPT is an incredibly competent jack of all trades, where does Perplexity fit in? 

Perplexity is designed to find information from the web

While Perplexity looks and feels a bit like a chatbot, it's far more focused than ChatGPT. It's an "answer engine" designed to find and summarize content from the web. 

When it first launched in late 2022, Perplexity was unique in its ambition to combine AI with traditional web search. Now, not so much. Search is a ubiquitous AI chatbot feature, Google has its own AI Mode, and ChatGPT's built-in search feature holds its own. But while Perplexity isn't the only AI search game in town anymore, it still offers better results than ChatGPT.

The best way to see this is by looking at the same query in both apps. Here's what ChatGPT gives me for "Why did the UK expand the right to vote to 16 year olds?"

It's searched the web and pulled content from around a dozen searches. While it's not a bad result, the formatting is tough to read and the sources inexplicably include a few links from half a decade ago.

There are other issues, too. While ChatGPT can usually understand from context whether you want to search the web, sometimes it doesn't. If you're not careful, you might think you're getting updated information when you're actually not because you didn't proactively click the Search option. For example, the first time I ran this search, ChatGPT confidently gave me an out-of-date answer pulled from its training data.

Here's what Perplexity gave me for the same prompt.

It's searched the web as well, but its selection of 20 sources is more numerous and more authoritative. All sources are from the past 24 hours except for an academic paper related to my question. And, while this is a bit subjective, Perplexity presents its results in a way that feels more polished and "newsy" to me than ChatGPT's emoji-filled summaries.

Perplexity also offers lots of little touches to help you build confidence in the answers it provides. For example, when you hover over a source, you can see if it's been recently updated.

You can also click on the Steps tab to see the search process Perplexity used to find its answers.

While this is just one example, the results are the same for other factual or newsworthy prompts. Whatever you ask, Perplexity tends to give a more rounded, referenced answer.

This isn't to say that ChatGPT's responses can't be useful. But Perplexity does a better job.

Perplexity also gives you control over where it looks for its resources. You can direct it to search the whole internet, just academic papers, social media discussions, or SEC filings, depending on where you think the best answer to your question might be.

If you like tinkering, you can also pick the AI model Perplexity uses to produce its answers. Perplexity offers access to the latest models from OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, and Grok, including both general-purpose models and reasoning models. It also has its own in-house models: Sonar (a Llama-based model for fast answers) and R1 1776 (a DeepSeek-based model for advanced reasoning). 

If you don't care about any of this and just want answers, you can also just let Perplexity automatically pick the best model for you based on your query.

Perplexity can do chatbot things if you push it

Large language models are nothing if not flexible, so while Perplexity is at its best answering factual questions, you can get it to do all the other chatbot-y things if you want. Either by giving it instructions on how to respond to prompts...

...or by using Perplexity's Spaces feature to work with specialized chatbots for tasks like creating social media posts or editing your writing.

And like ChatGPT, there's a built-in AI image generator. 

Still, all of this can feel a little beside the point. It's like trying to bang a nail in with a screwdriver. You can—but there are better tools for the job. 

Both apps have lots of cool features

Really, Perplexity's focus on generating accurate answers to search-like questions is the biggest difference between it and ChatGPT. Unfortunately, because there's such a big and obvious point of comparison, lots of cool features in both apps are easy to ignore because they can't really be considered side-by-side. 

So I won't. Instead, I'm going to list a few of the cool things that each app can do. This is far from an exhaustive list of all their features—and even if this isn't likely to help you decide between Perplexity and ChatGPT, it will at least give you a better overview of each app and how they can be used.

Perplexity

Perplexity has two different kinds of search, Pro and Basic. A Pro search is deeper, though free users are limited to just three queries per day. Still, the free searches in my tests have been surprisingly thorough. 

With Perplexity, you can sort your queries into Spaces. If you're researching a trip, planning a dinner party, or doing a review for an academic paper, it's a handy way of keeping all the information organized. It's similar to ChatGPT's Projects, but tends to be better for organizing research since it uses Perplexity's superior search skills.

Perplexity Discover offers a fresh take on reading the news. It may not look all that innovative—we've had news portals like this since the days of AOL—but since Perplexity customizes its Discover tab based on all of your searches and chats, it has a higher level of personalization than even Google can offer.

Perplexity Labs is a sort of "advanced deep research" feature. In addition to conducting research and producing lengthy reports, it can also gather multimedia assets and create custom charts. For example, you could ask Perplexity to design a sci-fi movie for you, and it will create characters and a plot, generate a storyboard, write a screenplay, and organize all of those assets for easy reference. 

I asked Labs to investigate why the Arena Football League went bankrupt and got this impressive multimedia report with custom charts.

You can also go to the Assets tab to see all the charts and calculations at a glance.

Perplexity integrates with Zapier, so you can pull the power of its AI research into all your other business tools, automatically. Learn more about how to automate Perplexity, or get started with one of these pre-made templates—and then expand into complete AI orchestration of your work.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is fully multimodal. This means it can respond to audio and image prompts as well as generate audio and images in return. Especially if you use the smartphone app, it makes ChatGPT far more useful as it can respond to significantly more diverse real-world situations. For example, if you're traveling, you can use it to translate a menu or sign, identify a specific dish based on a photo, or give you real-time commentary based on what it sees through your smartphone's camera.

ChatGPT is excellent at data analysis. While Perplexity can generate impressive charts with its Deep Research and Labs features, ChatGPT's latest reasoning models are what you need if you're looking for serious analysis.

ChatGPT's Canvas feature is great for creative projects. Whether you're writing or coding, Canvas gives you a space to iterate and revise your project. You can easily review changes you've made, restore earlier versions, and share your work.

ChatGPT agent can handle online tasks for you. Whether you're creating spreadsheets, designing slideshows, or just need to order a pizza, ChatGPT agent do research and take action. (Perplexity is working on similar functionality through its Comet browser.) ChatGPT agent was just launching as I wrote this article and hadn't yet rolled out to my ChatGPT Plus account, but most AI companies consider this sort of agent to be the next frontier of AI.

ChatGPT is really extensible. GPTs allow it to interact with services like Wolfram|Alpha, play games, and search scientific papers. If you want, you can even create your own GPT with your own data.

And because ChatGPT also integrates with Zapier, you can connect it to thousands of other apps, so you can access its power from wherever you spend your time. Learn more about how to automate ChatGPT, or get started with one of these pre-built templates. By pulling the power of ChatGPT into your existing workflows, you can create AI-powered systems that work across your entire tech stack.

Both have the same pricing structure

Perplexity AI and ChatGPT use the exact same pricing model. Both apps offer a more limited free version, a paid plan at $20/month, and a $200/month plan that offers higher limits and extra features.

To be honest, this is really great news on all counts. You can check out both apps without paying a penny—and if the free plans suit your needs, amazing. While you'll get fewer Pro searches on Perplexity and limited access to the latest models and features with ChatGPT, you should still be able to get a good idea of what each tool can do. 

Then, if you're using one more than the other, you can consider upgrading to the relevant paid plan. Of course, you might find out as I did that both tools have their uses, in which case you'll probably be tempted to pay for both of them.

ChatGPT vs. Perplexity: Which should you choose?

Perplexity and ChatGPT are both really powerful AI tools, and while they have some overlapping features, they're both useful in their own ways. 

• Choose Perplexity if you're looking for a conversational AI chatbot to replace or augment traditional searches. Its results—especially for real-time news—are consistently more accurate and produce fewer hallucinations. And with the ability to query only certain sources (like academic papers or SEC filings) and generate complex reports filled with charts and multimedia, Perplexity is better suited for serious research.

• Choose ChatGPT if you want a general-purpose AI assistant. It can handle any creative project or coding challenge you throw at it, is capable of powerful data analysis, and offers access to features like advanced voice mode and autonomous agents. If research and web search aren't your primary use cases, ChatGPT is your best bet.

Or, if you want to create a custom AI agent that can do more work for you, use Zapier Agents. Your agent can search the web, analyze data, and then actually take action across your tech stack. Learn more about Zapier Agents, or start building.

Related reading:

• Claude vs. ChatGPT: Which is best?

• Meta AI vs. ChatGPT: Which is best?

• The best ChatGPT alternatives

• What is ChatGPT Pro—and is it worth it?

• What are Claude computer use and OpenAI Operator?

• DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT: Which is best?

This article was originally published in June 2024 by Harry Guinness. The most recent update was in July 2025.