Meet Perplexity Computer: A Model-Agnostic AI Platform That Automates Research, Coding, and End-to-End Project Deployment

The personal computer turned 40 without ever truly becoming personal. Sure, it learned your name, stored your files, and eventually recognized your face, but it never really understood your work, your context, or your goals. That is where Perplexity Computer comes in as an ambitious new platform from the AI search company that's quietly been building toward something far bigger than a search engine. With Perplexity Computer, the company seems to be making a bold claim that the age of the multi-agent, end-to-end AI workstation has officially arrived, and it's available to anyone willing to rethink what a computer is supposed to do.

What is Perplexity Computer?

According to Perplexity's official announcement, Perplexity Computer is a general-purpose digital worker that operates the same software interfaces a human would (browsers, file systems, APIs, and connected services) to create and execute complete workflows autonomously. The platform can reason, delegate, research, build, code, deploy, and manage any project from start to finish without requiring users to use separate tools or manually hand off work between different AI services.

This is a meaningful distinction from the current AI workflows, where most users stitch together ChatGPT for writing, Cursor for coding, Midjourney for design, and a browser for research. Perplexity Computer is trying to collapse all of that into one orchestrated environment.

The Multi-Model Engine Under the Hood

What sets Perplexity Computer apart technically is its massively multi-model orchestration layer. Rather than routing every request through a single foundation model, Computer draws on a pool of 19 frontier AI models and assigns each subtask to the model best suited to it. According to Perplexity's official blog, the current model roster and their designated roles include:

• Claude Opus 4.6 by Anthropic for the core reasoning engine and handling the orchestration logic and complex sequencing.
• Gemini by Google for deep research tasks, capable of spawning its own sub-agents.
• GPT-5.2 by OpenAI for long-context recall and broad web search.
• Grok by xAI for speed-optimized for lightweight, fast-turnaround tasks.
• Nano Banana by Google for image generation.
• Veo 3.1 by Google for video generation.

Perplexity explicitly states that this model lineup is not fixed. As better models emerge in specific domains, the system can swap them in without redesigning the underlying architecture, making it a deliberately model-agnostic approach. Users also retain the ability to override the automatic routing and manually assign specific models to specific subtasks, giving power users better control over both quality and cost.

Cloud-Based, Personal, and Built to Remember

Unlike some agentic competitors that run on local hardware, Perplexity Computer operates entirely in the cloud. Every task runs inside an isolated compute environment with access to a real file system, a real browser, and real tool integrations, providing a contained, safe execution harness that limits risk while still interacting with live external services.

The platform is also designed around long-term personalization. Perplexity describes Computer as something that is "personal to you" as it maintains persistent memory across sessions, meaning the system retains context from past projects rather than starting fresh each time. Combined with hundreds of third-party connectors and direct web access, this architecture allows the multi-week or multi-month autonomous workflows that current AI tools cannot sustain.

Availability and Pricing

Perplexity Computer has launched immediately for Max plan subscribers, while a rollout to Pro and Enterprise Max subscribers is confirmed to come soon. The platform has also introduced a usage-based pricing for the first time across Perplexity's consumer products, while allowing users to select which models power individual sub-agent tasks and set spending caps to maintain budget control.

Here is how the credit system works at launch:

• Max subscribers receive 10,000 credits per month, included with their plan.
• Existing and new users receive a one-time bonus of 20,000 credits, granted at launch and expiring 30 days after issuance.
• A live demonstration of Computer tasks runs at perplexity.ai/computer/live.

Editor's note:

The launch of Perplexity Computer was unexpected; however, it shows how autonomous AI agents are becoming more capable. Being model-agnostic, the platform gives Perplexity AI the power to experiment with different AI models and allows users to avoid being forced to use a model they do not want. It seems like Perplexity is betting on multi-model orchestration rather than a single, increasingly powerful model as the architecture that will ultimately win for complex, sustained real-world work.