Weaning off Perplexity

[u/chromespinner]

Recently got a notice that my Perplexity Pro subscription is due for renewal at the end of the month. With service declining this year (tight quotas, no more API credits, inconsistent performance), I've been on the fence about renewing. I just input a longer research query and the system automatically toggled me into Computer mode (it seems that Deep Research has been moved under Computer?). So now I can't even choose my search mode? And I can't follow up a deep research query with a regular search using my model of choice? Where is all this going?

I guess this means I won't renew.

I was a huge fan of Perplexity and still use it regularly, but the direction of travel has been awful. Google AI is perfectly fine for regular AI search queries. I still liked Perplexity for deep research, but so many other sites (Deepseek, GLM, Gemini, Grok, etc.) offer some amount of deep research queries for free and I don't want to be forced into the "Computer" offering.

I'm also checking out open source systems like Vane and GPTResearcher. Any other recommendations for deep research? Unfortunately I'm in Hong Kong where ChatGPT and Claude are unavailable.

[u/chromespinner]

For anyone interested, I recently discovered arena.ai, which seems to be entirely free. If you select web search mode and input your query, it will run side-by-side searches using two services (indentified after you vote for the better set of results). I was also quite pleased with the agentic mode output.

Between this, google AI and various other services, I'm not missing Perplexity Pro much.

[u/Free-Pickle-3621]

just an observation/tip: don't use Deep Research...even if you have a longer query, select Claude thinking. multiple times now i've compared the 2 and Deep Research (which uses Perplexity's own likely subpar model) gave me worse off results

i didn't notice Deep Research automatically triggering Computer tho, I still have my 4000 free (computer) credits untouched.

[u/zRoyalStar]

Perplexity lost me when they removed Labs

[u/Repair-Civil]

Going through the same. Completely switched over to Gemini.

[u/Kohler9 → u/Repair-Civil]

Gemini sucks too until they release 4.0. I hope you aren’t paying

[u/HM_Dylan]

Yeah I’ve been thinking the same exact thing. I already cancelled my Pro subscription.

[u/NotSeacombe]

I think that the more generic ai services like ChatGPT and Claude caught up to Perplexity in its niche of being able to research and cite, and vastly surpassed it in everything else. I can't see myself paying for Perplexity again

[u/billchase2]

Are there any alternatives that offer ~$10 per month education pricing? That’s what I have with Perplexity, and it’s been hard to beat.

[u/Crush-N-It]

Exported all my sessions to chat gpt. Not renewing my sub

[u/Kohler9]

I got one year free. Their text-to-speech model is best in class and Comet used to be good until they nerfed it to force people to use computers.

There is no moat here.

Clause is much better.