Perplexity Web API MCP Server

MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes Perplexity AI search, research, and reasoning capabilities as tools.

No API Key Required

This MCP server uses your Perplexity account session directly — no API key needed.

Perplexity offers a separate paid API with per-request pricing that is charged independently from your Pro subscription. With this MCP, you don't need to pay for API access — your existing Perplexity subscription (or even a free account) is enough.

Simply extract the session tokens from your browser cookies, and you're ready to use Perplexity search, research, and reasoning in your IDE.

Tokenless Mode

The server can run without any authentication tokens. In this mode:

• Only perplexity_search (links only) and perplexity_ask (answer with sources) are available — perplexity_research and perplexity_reason require tokens.
• Both tools use the turbo model; PERPLEXITY_ASK_MODEL and PERPLEXITY_REASON_MODEL cannot be set (the server will throw an error if they are).
• File attachments (files parameter) are unavailable — they require tokens.

To use tokenless mode, simply omit PERPLEXITY_SESSION_TOKEN and PERPLEXITY_CSRF_TOKEN from your configuration.

For full access to all tools and model selection, provide both tokens as described in the Configuration section below.

Requirements

Supported Platforms

• macOS (arm64, x86_64)
• Linux (x86_64, aarch64)
• Windows (x86_64)

Configuration

Getting Your Tokens

This server requires a Perplexity AI account. You need to extract two authentication tokens from your browser cookies:

1. Log in to perplexity.ai in your browser
2. Open Developer Tools (F12 or right-click → Inspect)
3. Go to Application → Cookies → https://www.perplexity.ai
4. Copy the values of:
   • __Secure-next-auth.session-token → use as PERPLEXITY_SESSION_TOKEN
   • next-auth.csrf-token → use as PERPLEXITY_CSRF_TOKEN

Environment Variables

• PERPLEXITY_SESSION_TOKEN (optional): Perplexity session token (next-auth.session-token cookie). Required for perplexity_research, perplexity_reason, and file attachments.
• PERPLEXITY_CSRF_TOKEN (optional): Perplexity CSRF token (next-auth.csrf-token cookie). Required for perplexity_research, perplexity_reason, and file attachments.
• PERPLEXITY_ASK_MODEL (optional, requires tokens): Model for perplexity_ask. Valid values:
  • turbo (default for tokenless)
  • pro-auto (default for authenticated)
  • sonar
  • gpt-5.4
  • claude-4.6-sonnet
  • nemotron-3-super
• PERPLEXITY_REASON_MODEL (optional, requires tokens): Model for perplexity_reason. Val

... View full README on GitHub