Perplexity Search debuts on the Artificial Analysis Search Index, with all three context size variants taking top positions on the leaderboard The @perplexity_ai Search API comes with three context settings (low, medium, and high) that control how much extracted content each search result carries. We tested all three variants using our standardized methodology: the same model (GPT-5.6 Luna at medium reasoning), running inside Stirrup, our open-source agent harness, with tools for searching and fetching pages from the web. Only the provider behind the search tool changes. Key results: ➤ Perplexity Search (medium) scores 80 on the Artificial Analysis Search Index, ahead of the previous leaders, Parallel (advanced) and Brave Search (LLM context), at 75. The high and low variants score 79 and 77 respectively. Its lead is concentrated in BrowseComp results, with AA-Omniscience and DeepSearchQA scoring comparably to other leading providers ➤ Efficient search payloads: smaller overall search results mean the model reads less per task, so Perplexity has the lowest model inference cost per task of providers we’ve tested so far, ranging from $0.028 to $0.034 across the three variants vs $0.036 for the next lowest provider ➤ Total cost per task is ~$0.091 for the medium and high context variants, at mid-pack latency. For comparison, Parallel (advanced) costs $0.084 per task and Brave (LLM context) costs $0.13 per task