Key Takeaways
- •Perplexity processed 780 million queries in May 2025, with growth above 20 percent month over month.
- •Monthly query volume roughly tripled in ten months, from 250 million in July 2024 to 780 million in May 2025.
- •Perplexity's valuation went from $9 billion in December 2024 to $20 billion by September 2025.
- •The company has raised about $1.5 billion in total funding since its founding in 2022.
- •Annual recurring revenue passed $150 million in August 2025 and was approaching $200 million by September.
- •The Comet browser launched July 9, 2025 for $200 per month Max subscribers and went free worldwide on October 2, 2025 after millions joined the waitlist.
- •Comet Plus pays publishers 80 percent of subscription revenue from an initial $42.5 million pool.
- •Reddit is Perplexity's most cited domain at 6.6 percent of all citations, per Profound's study of 680 million citations.
- •Perplexity cites Wikipedia in under 1 percent of answers, while ChatGPT makes it its top source.
- •Perplexity made an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer for Google's Chrome browser in August 2025.
Queries and Growth
Perplexity's query volume roughly tripled in the ten months to May 2025, and the company's own disclosures are the most reliable usage numbers available.
- 01
780 million queries were processed by Perplexity in May 2025, a figure CEO Aravind Srinivas shared onstage at Bloomberg's Tech Summit.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
- 02
More than 20 percent month-over-month query growth was reported by Perplexity as of mid-2025.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
- 03
About 30 million queries per day were running through Perplexity by mid-2025, up from 3,000 queries on its first day in 2022.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
- 04
100 million queries per week was the milestone Perplexity announced in October 2024, roughly 400 million per month at the time.
Source: TechCrunch, 2024
- 05
250 million queries were handled in July 2024, meaning volume roughly tripled by May 2025's 780 million.
Source: TechCrunch, 2024
- 06
1 billion queries per week is the target Srinivas set in June 2025, saying Perplexity could get there within a year if growth held.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
Funding, Valuation, and Revenue
Perplexity's valuation more than doubled during 2025 alone, while revenue remains small relative to the price investors are paying.
- 07
$20 billion was Perplexity's valuation in September 2025, when it reportedly raised $200 million in new capital.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
- 08
$18 billion was the valuation just two months earlier, in July 2025, when Perplexity raised $100 million.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
- 09
$500 million was raised earlier in 2025 at a $14 billion valuation in a round led by Accel.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
- 10
$9 billion was Perplexity's valuation after a $500 million round led by Institutional Venture Partners closed in December 2024.
Source: TechCrunch, 2024
- 11
17x valuation growth happened during 2024 alone, from roughly $520 million at the start of the year to $9 billion by December.
Source: PYMNTS, 2024
- 12
About $1.5 billion in total funding had been raised by Perplexity as of September 2025.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
- 13
More than $150 million in annual recurring revenue was confirmed by Perplexity in August 2025, and a source told TechCrunch the figure was approaching $200 million by September.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
- 14
$34.5 billion was Perplexity's unsolicited August 2025 offer to buy Google's Chrome browser, a bid larger than its own valuation at the time.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
Comet Browser and Publisher Programs
Comet went from a $200 per month perk to a free product in under three months, and its Comet Plus subscription is now the main way Perplexity pays publishers.
- 15
July 9, 2025 was Comet's launch date, with access initially limited to subscribers of Perplexity's $200 per month Max plan.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
- 16
Millions of people joined the Comet waitlist before Perplexity made the browser free worldwide on October 2, 2025.
Source: TechCrunch, 2025
- 17
$42.5 million is the initial revenue pool behind Comet Plus, the $5 per month content subscription Perplexity announced in August 2025.
Source: Engadget, 2025
- 18
80 percent of Comet Plus subscription revenue goes to participating publishers, with Perplexity keeping 20 percent to cover compute costs.
Source: Engadget, 2025
- 19
3 types of engagement determine Comet Plus payouts to publishers: human visits to their sites, citations in AI answers, and agent actions that use their content.
Source: Engadget, 2025
- 20
6 launch partners joined the original Perplexity Publishers' Program on July 30, 2024: TIME, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and WordPress.com.
Source: CNBC, 2024
- 21
A double-digit percentage of ad revenue went to a publisher each time its page was cited in an ad-supported answer under the 2024 revenue-share model.
Source: Digiday, 2024
Citation Behavior and Sources
Perplexity leans on Reddit harder than any other major AI answer engine, and it barely touches Wikipedia, the opposite of ChatGPT's pattern.
- 22
680 million AI citations gathered between August 2024 and June 2025 form the basis of Profound's study of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews pick sources.
Source: Profound, 2025
- 23
6.6 percent of all Perplexity citations pointed to Reddit, making it the platform's single most cited domain in Profound's analysis.
Source: Profound, 2025
- 24
2.0 percent of Perplexity citations went to YouTube, its second most cited source after Reddit.
Source: Profound, 2025
- 25
7.8 percent of ChatGPT citations went to Wikipedia versus 1.8 percent to Reddit, roughly the mirror image of Perplexity's source preferences.
Source: Profound, 2025
- 26
Over 100 million citations from 230,000 prompts were analyzed in Semrush's 13-week study, which found Reddit was the top cited domain on Perplexity.
Source: Semrush, 2025
- 27
0.8 percent was Wikipedia's citation rate on Perplexity in Semrush's study, far below Wikipedia's presence in ChatGPT answers.
Source: Semrush, 2025
How to Cite This Page
APA: Best AEO Tools. (2026). Perplexity Statistics 2026. Retrieved from https://bestaeotools.com/statistics/perplexity-statistics
MLA: "Perplexity Statistics 2026." Best AEO Tools, 2026, https://bestaeotools.com/statistics/perplexity-statistics.
Chicago: Best AEO Tools. "Perplexity Statistics 2026." Accessed July 2026. https://bestaeotools.com/statistics/perplexity-statistics.
Frequently Asked Questions
Perplexity processed 780 million queries in May 2025, about 30 million per day, according to CEO Aravind Srinivas at Bloomberg's Tech Summit. That was up from roughly 250 million monthly queries in July 2024 and 100 million per week in October 2024. The company reported growth above 20 percent month over month in mid-2025.
Sources
Every statistic on this page links to the publication where the number appears. Data comes from 11 sources.
- TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/05/perplexity-received-780-million-queries-last-month-ceo-says/
- TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/25/perplexity-says-its-now-serving-100m-search-queries-a-week/
- TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/perplexity-reportedly-raised-200m-at-20b-valuation/
- TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/19/perplexity-has-reportedly-closed-a-500m-funding-round/
- PYMNTS: https://www.pymnts.com/news/investment-tracker/2024/report-perplexity-closed-500-million-funding-round-in-early-december/
- TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/02/perplexitys-comet-ai-browser-now-free-max-users-get-new-background-assistant/
- Engadget: https://www.engadget.com/ai/perplexity-has-cooked-up-a-new-way-to-pay-publishers-for-their-content-204255019.html
- CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/30/perplexity-ai-to-share-revenue-with-publishers-after-plagiarism-accusations.html
- Digiday: https://digiday.com/media/how-perplexity-new-revenue-model-works-according-to-its-head-of-publisher-partnerships/
- Profound: https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/ai-platform-citation-patterns
- Semrush: https://www.semrush.com/blog/most-cited-domains-ai/
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