Perplexity scraper API

Request

curl -X POST "https://api.answerline.dev/v1/monitor/perplexity" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"prompt":"Which project management tools do agencies use?","country":"US"}'

import { Client } from "@answerline/sdk";

const client = new Client({ apiKey: process.env.API_KEY! });
const answer = await client.monitor.perplexity({
  "prompt": "Which project management tools do agencies use?",
  "country": "US"
});

import os
from answerline import Client

with Client(os.environ["API_KEY"]) as client:
    answer = client.monitor.perplexity(
        prompt="Which project management tools do agencies use?",
        country="US",
    )

Every request option is on the Perplexity reference page.

What you get back

Full field definitions are on the Perplexity reference page.

The perplexity.ai answer versus Perplexity’s developer APIs

This endpoint returns the answer a user reads on perplexity.ai, as structured fields. You do not pick a model or parameters.

Perplexity’s developer platform (checked 2026-09-17, docs.perplexity.ai) lists an Agent API that gives web-grounded answers with built-in citations, a Search API that returns ranked web results, a Router API for hosted open-weight models, and an Embeddings API. With those you choose the model and parameters and get the grounding data the API exposes.

The answers served today return text, markdown, links, sources and citationPills, plus places when Perplexity shows a map (restaurants, shops and hotels, with address, phone, rating and review count) and images when it shows pictures. The contract also defines related_queries, search_model_queries, videos, hotels and shopping_cards; a free perplexity.ai answer shows none of them today.

Perplexity cites with chips next to its sentences. The chips are removed from text and markdown; citationPills keeps which sources sit together behind each chip, which is what a reader sees.

An annotated response

The excerpt follows the result schema for POST /v1/monitor/perplexity. Values are illustrative.

{
  "success": true,
  "result": {
    "text": "Agencies tend to pick tools with client billing, such as ExampleBoard and SampleTask...",
    // Cited pages in display order.
    "sources": [
      {
        "position": 1,
        "url": "https://www.example-reviews.com/agency-project-management",
        "label": "Project management tools for agencies",
        "description": "A comparison of tools built for client billing..."
      },
      {
        "position": 2,
        "url": "https://community.example.org/t/which-pm-tool",
        "label": "Which PM tool does your agency use?",
        "description": "Thread with 140 replies..."
      }
    ],
    // One entry per (chip, source). citationPillId is 1-based; both entries below
    // belong to the same visible chip. position points into result.sources.
    // Empty when the answer carries no pills.
    "citationPills": [
      { "label": "Project management tools for agencies", "citationPillId": 1, "url": "https://www.example-reviews.com/agency-project-management", "domain": "example-reviews.com", "position": 1 },
      { "label": "Which PM tool does your agency use?", "citationPillId": 1, "url": "https://community.example.org/t/which-pm-tool", "domain": "community.example.org", "position": 2 }
    ]
  }
}

Lists with no entries are absent, not empty. related_queries, search_model_queries, videos, hotels and shopping_cards are not returned today; see Perplexity images for images and Perplexity places for places.

result.provenance reads searchMode forced: every answer searches the web (all fields).

Notes for this engine

Answer length

Every request gets the answer perplexity.ai writes with a Quick Search: one search and a short answer, typically 300 to 700 characters. answerDepth is accepted and ignored, so every value returns the same kind of answer at the same price.

Market

Perplexity answers in any country. It accepts a US state, which implies country US, and answers for the whole US; only ChatGPT and Gemini answer from inside a state (states).

Handling the results

Sources and their order change between runs of the same prompt. Put a sample index in each idempotency key so you can report rates with a sample size; AI answer volatility covers how many samples to take.

citationPills is an empty list when there are none. An empty list is an observation, not an error.

A citationPills[].label can be an empty string. Use domain or url for identity.

A brand named in text and a brand cited in sources are different metrics with different causes; keep them apart. See mentions vs citations.

Answers and their sources change between markets, so run prompts in each market you report on instead of extrapolating from one country.

Related: the best Perplexity scrapers compared, every request field, AI visibility tracking, monitoring Perplexity, competitor analysis, Reddit citations in AI answers, brand protection.

From the blog

Docs

• Quickstart
• API reference
• Engine features
• Async tasks and batches
• Webhooks
• Coverage
• Pricing and failures
• Rate limits

Other engines