Perplexity Launches $200 “Max” Subscription

“Limitless AI productivity” is the pitch, and $200 a month is the price. On July 2, Perplexity announced its most expensive subscription yet: Perplexity Max, a plan aimed squarely at power users who want the latest AI tools without limits. The new tier, available now on web and iOS, offers unlimited access to Labs—the company’s advanced spreadsheet and report generation suite—and promises first dibs on upcoming features like Comet, an AI-powered browser that’s still under wraps.

It’s a bold move in a market that’s suddenly crowded with premium AI subscriptions. OpenAI kicked off the $200-a-month trend with ChatGPT Pro, and now Google, Anthropic, and even coding platform Cursor are rolling out similar high-end tiers. Perplexity’s Max plan stands out by bundling priority access to the latest “frontier models,” including OpenAI’s o3-pro and Claude Opus 4 from Anthropic, plus faster support and a promise of exclusive data sources shortly.

Who’s this for? Perplexity says Max is designed for professionals, research teams, business strategists, and anyone who needs to churn through massive data sets or generate complex reports on demand. “We built Max for those who demand limitless AI productivity and immediate access to the newest products and features,” the company wrote in its launch blog post. Still, not everyone’s convinced that $200 a month is worth it—especially when the $20 Pro plan already covers most needs for casual users, and the $40 Enterprise Pro tier handles team management and security.

There’s another angle here: cash burn. Despite reporting $34 million in revenue last year, Perplexity spent nearly twice that—$65 million—mostly on cloud servers and licensing AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. The company’s annual recurring revenue reportedly hit $80 million in January, but profitability remains elusive, even as Perplexity chases a $14 billion valuation and a rumored $500 million funding round.

With Google and OpenAI both pushing hard into AI search and browser tools, the stakes are high. Will enough users pony up for “unlimited” AI to make Perplexity’s math work? Or is this just another sign of how expensive the AI arms race has become? As one industry analyst put it: “Everyone wants to be first with the best model. But at $200 a month, you’d better be sure you need it.”