Perplexity MCP
The official MCP server for the Perplexity API. Sonar search and reasoning models exposed to AI agents through MCP. 2,144 GitHub stars and 5 commits on main in the last 30 days.
“Official Perplexity Sonar API exposed as an MCP server. Three tools cover search, research, and reasoning. 2,144 stars and 5 commits on main in the last 30 days.”
INSTALL THIS SERVER
{
"mcpServers": {
"perplexity": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"server-perplexity-ask"
],
"env": {
"PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "YOUR_PERPLEXITY_API_KEY"
}
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"perplexity": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"server-perplexity-ask"
],
"env": {
"PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "YOUR_PERPLEXITY_API_KEY"
}
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"perplexity": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"server-perplexity-ask"
],
"env": {
"PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "YOUR_PERPLEXITY_API_KEY"
}
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"perplexity": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"server-perplexity-ask"
],
"env": {
"PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "YOUR_PERPLEXITY_API_KEY"
}
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"perplexity": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"server-perplexity-ask"
],
"env": {
"PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "YOUR_PERPLEXITY_API_KEY"
}
}
}
}
3 TOOLS AVAILABLE
OUR ASSESSMENT
- 2,144 GitHub stars, top of the search category.
- Official Perplexity maintenance with first-party API documentation.
- Three tools cover the full Sonar surface: search, research, reasoning.
- MIT license.
- 5 commits on main in the last 30 days.
- Sonar API is a paid product; expect per-query cost when agents use it at scale.
- API key carries quota; agents that loop on perplexity_research can burn credits quickly.
- No streaming tool surface; long reasoning queries return as a single response.
PERPLEXITY_API_KEY is account-scoped. Set per-key spend limits in the Perplexity dashboard before connecting to long-running agent workflows.
Agents that need cited web search and source-grounded reasoning; teams already paying for Sonar Pro; research workflows that benefit from chain-of-thought reasoning before action.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
ADOPTION METRICS
// Reading this2,144 stars on the ppl-ai/modelcontextprotocol official repo. 5 commits on main in the last 30 days.
// Reading thisPairs with Brave Search, Exa, Tavily, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia in the search category. Perplexity covers cited web search plus reasoning, complementing Brave (raw web), Exa (semantic), and Wikipedia (reference).
SOURCES & VERIFICATION
We don't take any single directory's word for it. Before scoring, we cross-reference 5 public MCP sources, install the server ourselves against the clients we cover, and record when we last re-verified.
The same server, 5 different lenses. We reconcile these signals into our editorial score, which is why our number sometimes diverges from a directory-aggregate star count.
| Source | Their rating | Their star count | Their downloads | Last synced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AutomationSwitch This page | 4.5editorial | 2,144 | — | MAY 5, 2026 |
| PulseMCP | — unrated | unavailable | unavailable | MAY 5, 2026 |
| MCP.so | — unrated | unavailable | unavailable | MAY 5, 2026 |
| Glama | — unrated | unavailable | unavailable | MAY 5, 2026 |
| Smithery | — unrated | unavailable | unavailable | MAY 5, 2026 |
| Official MCP Registry | — unrated | unavailable | unavailable | MAY 5, 2026 |
// Counts are directory-reported; we don't adjust them. Discrepancies usually come from different snapshot times or star-caching.
OTHER SEARCH MCP SERVERS
Exa Search MCP
Neural search across the open web, companies, news, people (LinkedIn), and academic papers, plus a deep-research mode that runs multi-step query plans. 4,371 GitHub stars and 83 commits on main in the last 30 days.
Brave Search MCP
Official Brave Search MCP covering web, local, video, image, news, and AI summary. 965 GitHub stars and 31 commits on main in the last 30 days. Privacy-respecting search index distinct from Google.
Tavily MCP
Tavily Search and Extract APIs as MCP tools, with both local stdio and hosted streamable transports at https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp. 1,891 GitHub stars and 14 commits on main in the last 30 days.
DuckDuckGo Search MCP
Community-built DuckDuckGo Search MCP server with web search, content fetching, and intelligent text extraction. Built-in rate limiting protects against DuckDuckGo blocking. SafeSearch and region configuration via env vars.
Wikipedia MCP
Wikipedia retrieval MCP server: fetch articles, search, and pull structured Wikipedia content into agent context. 239 stars and 4 commits on main in the last 30 days.
DISCUSS YOUR
MCP REQUIREMENTS.
Evaluating a server, scoping an internal deployment, or working out whether MCP is the right fit at all. Start the conversation and we will point you at the right piece of the ecosystem.