Quickstart
Overview
Section titled “Overview”The official Perplexity SDKs provide convenient access to the Perplexity APIs from Python 3.8+ and Node.js applications. Both SDKs include type definitions for all request parameters and response fields, with both synchronous and asynchronous clients.
Access three APIs: Agent API for third-party models with web search tools and presets, Search for ranked web search results, and Embeddings for generating text embeddings.
Available APIs
Section titled “Available APIs”Agent API
Third-party models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and more with presets and web search tools.
Search
Ranked web search results with filtering, multi-query support, and domain controls.
Embeddings
Generate high-quality text embeddings for semantic search and RAG.
Installation
Section titled “Installation”Install the SDK for your preferred language:
pip install perplexityainpm install @perplexity-ai/perplexity_aiAuthentication
Section titled “Authentication”Get your Perplexity API Key
Generate a new key on the API Keys page in the API Console.
Click here
After generating the key, set it as an environment variable in your terminal:
setx PERPLEXITY_API_KEY "your_api_key_here"export PERPLEXITY_API_KEY="your_api_key_here"Using Environment Variables
Section titled “Using Environment Variables”You can use the environment variable directly:
import os
from perplexity import Perplexity
client = Perplexity() # Automatically uses PERPLEXITY_API_KEYimport Perplexity from '@perplexity-ai/perplexity_ai';
const client = new Perplexity({
apiKey: process.env['PERPLEXITY_API_KEY'], // This is the default and can be omitted
});Or use python-dotenv (Python) or dotenv (Node.js) to load the environment variable from a .env file:
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from perplexity import Perplexity
load_dotenv()
client = Perplexity() # Uses PERPLEXITY_API_KEY from .env fileimport Perplexity from '@perplexity-ai/perplexity_ai';
import dotenv from 'dotenv';
dotenv.config();
const client = new Perplexity(); // Uses PERPLEXITY_API_KEY from .env fileAgent API
Get started with third-party models
Search
Get started with web search
Embeddings
Get started with text embeddings