Perplexity Provider

The Perplexity provider offers access to Sonar API - a language model that uniquely combines real-time web search with natural language processing. Each response is grounded in current web data and includes detailed citations, making it ideal for research, fact-checking, and obtaining up-to-date information.

API keys can be obtained from the Perplexity Platform.

Setup

The Perplexity provider is available via the @ai-sdk/perplexity module. You can install it with:

pnpm add @ai-sdk/perplexity

Provider Instance

You can import the default provider instance perplexity from @ai-sdk/perplexity:

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import { perplexity } from '@ai-sdk/perplexity';

For custom configuration, you can import createPerplexity and create a provider instance with your settings:

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import { createPerplexity } from '@ai-sdk/perplexity';
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const perplexity = createPerplexity({
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  apiKey: process.env.PERPLEXITY_API_KEY ?? '',
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});

You can use the following optional settings to customize the Perplexity provider instance:

• baseURL string

  Use a different URL prefix for API calls. The default prefix is https://api.perplexity.ai.

• apiKey string

  API key that is being sent using the Authorization header. It defaults to the PERPLEXITY_API_KEY environment variable.

• headers Record<string,string>

  Custom headers to include in the requests.

• fetch (input: RequestInfo, init?: RequestInit) => Promise<Response>

  Custom fetch implementation.

Language Models

You can create Perplexity models using a provider instance:

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import { perplexity } from '@ai-sdk/perplexity';
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import { generateText } from 'ai';
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const { text } = await generateText({
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  model: perplexity('sonar-pro'),
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  prompt: 'What are the latest developments in quantum computing?',
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});

Sources

Websites that have been used to generate the response are included in the sources property of the result:

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import { perplexity } from '@ai-sdk/perplexity';
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import { generateText } from 'ai';
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const { text, sources } = await generateText({
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  model: perplexity('sonar-pro'),
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  prompt: 'What are the latest developments in quantum computing?',
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});
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console.log(sources);

Provider Options & Metadata

The Perplexity provider includes additional metadata in the response through providerMetadata. Additional configuration options are available through providerOptions.

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const result = await generateText({
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  model: perplexity('sonar-pro'),
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  prompt: 'What are the latest developments in quantum computing?',
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  providerOptions: {
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    perplexity: {
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      return_images: true, // Enable image responses (Tier-2 Perplexity users only)
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    },
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  },
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});
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console.log(result.providerMetadata);
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// Example output:
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// {
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//   perplexity: {
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//     usage: { citationTokens: 5286, numSearchQueries: 1 },
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//     images: [
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//       { imageUrl: "https://example.com/image1.jpg", originUrl: "https://elsewhere.com/page1", height: 1280, width: 720 },
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//       { imageUrl: "https://example.com/image2.jpg", originUrl: "https://elsewhere.com/page2", height: 1280, width: 720 }
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//     ]
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//   },
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// }

The metadata includes:

• usage: Object containing citationTokens and numSearchQueries metrics
• images: Array of image URLs when return_images is enabled (Tier-2 users only)

You can enable image responses by setting return_images: true in the provider options. This feature is only available to Perplexity Tier-2 users and above.

PDF Support

The Perplexity provider supports reading PDF files. You can pass PDF files as part of the message content using the file type:

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const result = await generateText({
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  model: perplexity('sonar-pro'),
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  messages: [
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    {
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      role: 'user',
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      content: [
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        {
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          type: 'text',
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          text: 'What is this document about?',
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        },
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        {
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          type: 'file',
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          data: fs.readFileSync('./data/ai.pdf'),
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          mediaType: 'application/pdf',
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          filename: 'ai.pdf', // optional
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        },
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      ],
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    },
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  ],
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});

You can also pass the URL of a PDF:

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{
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  type: 'file',
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  data: new URL('https://example.com/document.pdf'),
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  mediaType: 'application/pdf',
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  filename: 'document.pdf', // optional
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}

The model will have access to the contents of the PDF file and respond to questions about it.

Model Capabilities