Perplexity · Ask with web search answers a question from a live web search, and says which pages it used. Use it to look up a new lead's company before a call, check the news about a supplier, or find a public fact a form left out. It runs on your company's own Perplexity key.

Who can do this

Workspace Admins and Editors, on every plan.

Before you start

A Perplexity connection in Connections — see Connect Perplexity.

Steps

  1. Select + where the question should be asked. In the step picker, open AI, then Perplexity, and select Ask with web search.
  2. In Connection, choose the connection with your key.
  3. Optional: in Model, choose a model — sonar, sonar-pro, sonar-reasoning, sonar-reasoning-pro or sonar-deep-research. Perplexity has no list to read, so the choices are set in Bizomate. Left empty, the step uses sonar. To use another, select Use a value and type its name.
  4. Optional: in Instructions, say how to answer — Answer in three short sentences. Say when you are not sure.
  5. In Prompt, ask the question, with the item's values in {{ }} — What does {{ $json.company }} do, and roughly how many people work there?
  6. Optional: in Recency, limit the search to pages from the last Day, Week, Month or Year. Any time is the default.
  7. Optional: in Sites, list the sites to search — northwindlogistics.com — or put - before one to leave it out. Separate several with commas; up to 20.
  8. Under Give me back, choose Fields (the default) or Text. For Fields, add a row per answer: the name, and what goes in it — employees — a number.
  9. Select Run this step, then check Output. Pin it while you build — see Pin a step's output.

Output

  • Fields: each field by its name, then citations, searchResults and usage.
  • Text: text, citations, searchResults and usage.
  • citations — the addresses of the pages the answer used, in order.
  • searchResults — each with title, url and date (when the page has one).
  • usage holds model, tokensIn, tokensOut and seconds. Output shows them as the usage strip.

Good to know

  • Each item is a separate search, and a separate cost. Perplexity charges per request as well as per token.
  • Answers can be wrong, and pages change. Keep a person in the loop before an answer goes to a customer — an IF step on a field such as confident: true or false helps; see Choose a path with IF.
  • For a busy account, set If this step fails to try again — see Make a step try again when it fails.

If something goes wrong

What the run says Why What to do
Perplexity refused the API key. Replace it on Connections. The key is wrong or revoked. Replace the key on Connections.
Perplexity says too many requests, or the account is out of credit. Set this step to try again, or check the account. A rate limit, or no credit left. Add credit in Perplexity; set the step to try again.
Perplexity answered 400: … Perplexity refused the request — an unknown model, or too many sites. It is not tried again. Read Perplexity's reason; check the model and Sites.
Perplexity did not give back the fields asked for. Try again, or make the instructions plainer. The answer was not in the fields asked for. Make Instructions plainer, or the fields fewer.
Could not reach Perplexity: … / Perplexity did not answer in time. Perplexity did not answer. Try again.