Perplexity Sonar API: Research Agents as a Service

Perplexity's new Sonar API exposes their research agent capabilities through a standard model-like interface. The service joins OpenAI's o1 in a growing category of agent-based systems packaged as simple API endpoints.

Under the hood, both Sonar and o1 run complex multi-model orchestration workflows. Yet they present as traditional model APIs, abstracting away the complexity of agent systems that decompose and execute multi-step tasks.

Technical Details

The API accepts natural language queries and handles:

• Task decomposition
• Multi-step research execution
• Source retrieval and citation
• Response synthesis

Pricing

Perplexity's pricing reflects the computational overhead of running agent workflows. Like o1, Sonar commands higher rates than standard LLM APIs due to the multiple model calls and orchestration required per request.

Engineering Impact

This abstraction of agent systems behind clean APIs marks a shift in the AI infrastructure landscape. Rather than building orchestration from scratch, teams can now access production-ready agent capabilities through familiar REST interfaces. The trend suggests agent-based architectures are becoming a standard pattern in AI system design.