Perplexity AI vs ChatGPT (2024): AI App Comparison

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Verdict: There’s no clear cut winner across all use cases, but after using both of these apps in a head-to-head matchup, Perplexity AI comes out on top for me thanks to its higher level of accuracy and depth in its answers to research questions.

Perplexity AI and ChatGPT are two of the most popular AI platforms, both offering advanced capabilities in language understanding and content generation. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses that make it better-suited to different use cases.

• Perplexity AI: Best for Research-Oriented AI Assistance
• ChatGPT: Best for a Wide Range of Conversational AI Uses

Perplexity AI is essentially an AI-powered search engine that draws from a database of sources to deliver source-backed, information-rich responses to your questions. ChatGPT, on the other hand, leverages OpenAI’s own GPT models to offer a range of capabilities, including creating original text and code, analyzing data, summarizing long documents, and mimicking human-like conversations. Here’s what you need to know about these two powerful tools and how they compare across key features, use cases, pricing, implementation, and more.

Perplexity AI vs ChatGPT at a Glance

	Perplexity AI	ChatGPT
Pricing	• Free version with standard features  • Pro version costs $20/month	• Free access to basic features  • ChatGPT Plus costs $20/month
Core Features	Real-time web search, source citations, Copilot search, diverse content handling	Multimodal capabilities, custom GPTs, text summarization, code and content creation
Ease of Implementation	Easy	Easy
Unique Offerings	Real-time web search and diverse source integration for research and academic purposes	Strong conversational abilities, original content, and customization for personalized outputs
	Visit Perplexity AI	Visit ChatGPT

What is Perplexity AI?

Perplexity AI is an artificial intelligence search engine and AI chatbot created to give accurate and comprehensive answers to user queries. Its roots in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning enable it to deliver real-time, up-to-date information across a wide range of topics and provide sources for its answers. This makes it a good choice for students, researchers, and any user in need of reliable, in-depth information.

I often prefer Perplexity AI to ChatGPT when doing research for articles on topics for which new information is coming out quickly—for example, any article about AI. Its ability to synthesize what other writers have written recently on the topic and deliver nuanced answers while guiding me toward the online resources it used to create those answers is very helpful. This streamlines my research process without sacrificing accuracy and depth of understanding.

Key Features of Perplexity AI

The key features that distinguish Perplexity AI are fast web search, source citations, diverse content handling and—at a higher price point—Perplexity’s Pro Search feature.

Real-Time Web Search

Perplexity AI’s real-time search capability gives users the most current information available on the web—literally up to the minute. Professionals such as researchers who rely on the most current data available for their work will be impressed by this feature. To try out both tools, I asked both Perplexity and ChatGPT the price of Bitcoin, which fluctuates constantly. Here’s how they performed:

• Perplexity: First prompt was closest to the correct price and cited multiple sources
• ChatGPT: Gave an outdated answer—even after two prompts—and then linked to a site with the real-time Bitcoin price

Source Citations

Unlike many AI platforms, Perplexity AI offers citations for its responses, ensuring users can trace the origin of the information. This transparency is invaluable in academic and professional settings where the credibility of sources and reliable information is critical. When I asked Perplexity AI what Samsung’s market cap is, it provided eight reputable sources for its answer.

Diverse Content Handling

Perplexity can help you create code, write tables, research solutions to math problems, and summarize texts. It’s aso impressive in its ability to understand complex queries using cutting-edge natural language processing (NLP), setting it apart from simpler Q&A or chatbot services.

Pro Search

By leveraging GPT-4 and Claude 3 large language models (LLMs), Perplexity’s Pro Search feature enhances the research experience by giving users longer, more comprehensive answers. Though it takes five to 10 seconds longer than Quick Search, its accuracy and transparency make the results worth the wait. Perplexity will even tell you, step-by-step, how it answered your question. Free plan users are limited to five Pro Search queries every four hours.

Pros

• Accurate, nuanced answers with a focus on providing source citations for reliability
• Real-time search capability ensures information is current and relevant
• Handles a variety of content types, from text and code to tables and math problems
• Personalization features tailor responses based on user interests and search history

Cons

• Academic focus means it may not be as effective for casual or conversational queries
• Depth and detail of information can be overwhelming for users seeking quick answers
• Requires constant internet connectivity for real-time searches, limiting offline use
• Despite its accuracy, it occasionally has hallucinations and gives wrong information

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is OpenAI’s biggest and most popular product, and the AI application that revolutionized conversational AI with its ability to understand and generate human-like text. One of its greatest capabilities is the way it offers coherent, contextually relevant dialogue to keep users engaged across diverse topics. Additionally, ChatGPT’s capabilities have expanded to process image and audio (spoken word) inputs, making it even more versatile and capable of a greater spectrum of conversational applications.

Whenever I need a large language model that will help me generate, remix, or refine written text, I turn to ChatGPT over Perplexity AI. With the right prompt and my ongoing feedback about the quality of its output, I can use it like an assistant to create all sorts of creative, nuanced outputs that are useful for copywriting projects.

Key Features of ChatGPT

The distinguishing features of ChatGPT include its ability to handle multimodal input, DALL-E integration, custom and ready-made GPTs, and content creation.

Multimodal Capabilities

ChatGPT’s ability to process and generate responses from text, image, and audio inputs offers users a more interactive and engaging experience. This ability enables ChatGPT to handle a wide array of professional situations as colleagues and customers submit data in different mediums; the app can output a richer, more context-aware conversation due to its strength in multimodal.

DALL-E Integration

Incorporating DALL-E’s image generation capabilities, ChatGPT can create detailed visuals from textual descriptions, making it useful for tasks requiring a blend of text and imagery. This integration is highly beneficial for both creative professionals and marketers who need to generate fast visual content.

Custom and Ready-Made GPTs

Replacing ChatGPT’s plugin system, this custom GPT functionality enables users to find or create their own versions of ChatGPT for specialized purposes. If you decide to build a custom GPT, no coding skills are required.

Code and Content Creation

ChatGPT’s significant functionality in generating programming code and diverse content types, from marketing copy to creative writing, makes it invaluable across many industries, including tech, marketing, and education.

Pros

• Unmatched conversational abilities
• Multimodal interaction support enhances ChatGPT’s user experiences
• Regular updates and improvements ensure it remains innovative
• Ease of use with extensive documentation and community support

Cons

• Broad focus may not fit users seeking in-depth, specialized information
• Multimodal features are still evolving, which may affect their reliability in certain applications
• User content is used in training by default for lower tier plans, with the ability to opt-out
• Will at times confidently give inaccurate responses; fact-checking is recommended

Read eWeek’s guide to the top generative AI companies for insight about today’s leaders in the field.

Best for Pricing: ChatGPT

At the entry level, ChatGPT and Perplexity AI are quite similar in price: both offer free plans, with paid plans starting at $20 per user, per month. It’s hard to compare them because their entry level is essentially identical, and Perplexity doesn’t disclose its Enterprise plan price.

ChatGPT offers more pricing flexibility with added tiers and features for businesses. The Team plan offers access to ChatGPT’s Advanced Data Analytics starting at $25 per user, per month when billed annually. The Enterprise plan—$9,000 a month for 150 employees—offers stronger security and collaboration features suitable for a business investment.

Perplexity AI’s upper level pricing tier, Perplexity Enterprise Pro, has a self-serve option for $40 a month, or $400 per year, per seat. The company also offers a custom Enterprise plan whose price it doesn’t disclose publicly.

Best for Core Features: Perplexity AI

This is a highly subjective rating, as the quality of each tool’s feature set truly depends on your needs as a user and what you’re using it to accomplish. Overall, the answer turns on the definition of core features—since the majority of people comparing these two tools are likely looking for a reliable, affordable research assistant, Perplexity takes first place, if only by a slight margin.

As a tech writer who does a lot of research, I find that Perplexity AI excels in delivering accurate, deep, source-cited information. The presentation of the data is also incredibly helpful, as it’s offered with lots of options on what to do next, the steps taken by the model, related topics, and more.

ChatGPT, with its broad conversational capabilities, is versatile but doesn’t match the depth of content that Perplexity AI provides, especially for academic and professional research contexts. However, as a writer, I find ChatGPT more creative and nuanced in its natural language processing, which is why it’s my go-to resource for brainstorming ideas or receiving feedback on an article draft to find ways to improve it.

I’ve even asked it to “play a New Yorker editor and provide suggestions to improve the prose.” Although some of the advice was inappropriate for my project, there were a few gems—for instance, ChatGPT noticed a few places in my draft article where the abrupt tonal shift might have been jarring to the reader and provided alternative word choices.

Best for Ease of Implementation: ChatGPT

ChatGPT’s ease of integration and user-friendly API make it the better choice for developers and businesses looking to quickly implement AI conversational features. While powerful, Perplexity AI may require somewhat more specialized knowledge to fully leverage its research-oriented capabilities. Additionally, its research orientation already limits the scope of its use cases in comparison to ChatGPT.

Best for Accuracy: Perplexity AI

Accurate information is a big deal, and still a pain point for ChatGPT, which can sound coherent even while producing highly believable yet completely false or made-up information. Perplexity AI, on the other hand, is committed to providing up-to-date, citation-backed information. It easily tops ChatGPT for accuracy. Its real-time search features are also ahead of ChatGPT, which still sometimes offers inaccurate and inconsistent answers.

Best for Conversational AI: ChatGPT

ChatGPT easily wins this category as its advanced natural language processing makes it hard to compare with anything else when it comes to creating engaging, human-like conversations across a wide range of topics. It clearly surpasses Perplexity AI in general conversational applications.

Who Shouldn’t Use Perplexity AI or ChatGPT?

Perplexity AI and ChatGPT are both top-tier AI tools, but it’s unlikely that either app will be the ideal fit for every user or scenario. Here’s what you need to know:

• Who Shouldn’t Use Perplexity AI: With its focus on delivering detailed, citation-supported answers, Perplexity AI might be a hard sell for users looking for quick, casual interactions or those who need AI assistance in creative content generation. Its emphasis on research and data accuracy makes it less suited for applications requiring broad, conversational AI capabilities.
• Who Shouldn’t Use ChatGPT: ChatGPT may not meet the needs of users who require highly specialized, data-driven responses, particularly in academic or professional research contexts. Businesses or individuals needing generative AI tools with a strong emphasis on providing up-to-date, citation-backed information might find its generalist approach less effective.

Best Alternatives to Perplexity AI and ChatGPT

While Perplexity AI and ChatGPT are both powerful generative AI apps in their own right, there are other alternatives in the market that might better suit your needs.

Review Methodology: How I Evaluated Perplexity AI vs ChatGPT

I based my review of Perplexity AI vs ChatGPT on a handful of factors that helped differentiate each platform: pricing, features, user experience, and accuracy.

• Pricing: I looked at how each tool approached pricing and examined how flexible their pricing options are. Both platforms offer a free tier and start their paid tiers at $20 per user per month, and both offer custom Enterprise plans.
• Core Features: I examined the strongest use cases of each generative AI tool and how each tool approached the features under its scope. For Perplexity AI, I considered real-time web search capabilities, source citations, and the quality of its research-oriented responses, and evaluated ChatGPT’s conversational AI capabilities, content generation diversity, and multimodal interaction features.
• User Experience: I took a hands-on approach to learn how easy each platform was to use confidently, and to understand  how intuitive each was to pick up and start using. I considered the design of the platforms, the learning curve for new users, and the accessibility of key features.
• Accuracy and Reliability: I scrutinized the accuracy of information provided by Perplexity AI and the AI conversational relevance and coherence of ChatGPT’s responses. I also compared the real-time web searching capabilities of the two with simple tests, including getting the price of Bitcoin in real time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Bottom Line: Perplexity AI and ChatGPT Have Different Strengths

We’ve seen that Perplexity AI excels in delivering accurate, citation-backed information, while ChatGPT’s dynamic AI conversational capabilities shine. However, your choice will come down to whether you lean toward the rather fluid conversational applications of AI, which favors ChatGPT, or whether you prefer to use AI for a more structured approach to sourcing correct information, which favors Perplexity AI. In truth, these two AI apps are highly distinct, which should make your choice an easy one. If it’s not, they both offer free versions so you can test them out before purchasing.

See eWeek’s rankings of the top AI companies for a detailed portrait of the businesses moving this dynamic technology forward in 2024.