Perplexity Teammates is a persistent AI agent that Perplexity Max subscribers can give an ongoing job, such as following up on deadlines. It is a research preview inside the $200 a month Max plan. My read: worth a look only if the job needs judgement, not a fixed schedule.
TL;DR: should you pay for Perplexity Teammates? (Quick Answer)
As of 2026-11-08, Perplexity Teammates is a named agent with a standing job, announced on 5 November 2026 (the launch post is dated 4 November). Perplexity's help center says it is “still under development, and behavior may change”. No independent track record exists yet, so treat everything below as early.
It has no separate price. You need Perplexity Max ($200 a month or $2,000 a year), and teammates draw on its included credits.
- Buy if: you already pay for Max, or you have an ongoing job that needs judgement across several tools and you can review the output.
- Skip if:the job is “do X every Monday at 9”. A scheduled automation does that for less.
- Skip if: you cannot tolerate an unpublished per-run credit cost.
Honesty line: this is based on Perplexity's documentation and public discussion three days after launch, not our own test. We have not run it ourselves, and nobody outside Perplexity has much to report yet.
What Perplexity Teammates actually is
Per Perplexity's launch post, a teammate is a named agent for long-running work, built on Perplexity Computer. In plain terms: one thread that never closes, memory across runs, and its own computer and browser to work in.
The difference is easy to state. A chatbot answers when you ask. A one-off agent run finishes a task and stops. A teammate keeps a standing job and, per the vendor, notices changes in connected tools without a new prompt. New to this? Read what an AI agent is.
Two vendor examples are operator jobs: an ops teammate that follows up when a deadline is 72 hours away, and a sales teammate that notices a customer stopped ordering. The on-call engineer, pull request and Datadog demos are developer scenes. If you do not write code, skip them.
“Proactive” is the claim to watch, because everything else hangs on it. The product page says teammates “work 24/7 in the background and notify you when decisions need to be made”. That is a vendor claim, unverified outside Perplexity.
How it works, and what setup asks of you
Perplexity's setup in five steps: open the Teammates tab, name the teammate, connect tools, describe the work, assign it to a project.
The description is where the real work happens. You spell out the source of work, the expected output, the schedule or trigger, and the audience. See how to write instructions for an AI agent. The vendor's own example is a Slack summary every weekday at 9 a.m. ET. That is a scheduled job, plain and simple. Hold that thought, because it comes back below.
New teammates default to Claude Opus 5.5; the help center advises a cheaper model for routine work.
What it costs (and what nobody has published)
Teammates has no price of its own. The only way in is a Perplexity Max subscription.
Cost at a glance (sources: Perplexity help center, last checked 2026-11-08)
| Item | What is published |
|---|---|
| Price | $200 a month or $2,000 a year for Max |
| Annual, per month | About $167 (our arithmetic: $2,000 / 12) |
| Included credits | 10,000 a month; 100 credits = $1 (about $100, our arithmetic) |
| Who gets it | Individual Max only; not Pro, and Enterprise Pro/Max not included by default |
| Not published | Credits used per teammate run; size and end date of the promotional credit grant |
Sources: Perplexity's Max help page and credits article, last modified 2026-11-04. PCMag via Yahoo Tech (2026-11-06) reports the same $200 and $2,000 prices.
The promotional credit grant is the confusing part. Per the product page, after the grant “teammates use the credits that are already included with your Max plan”. What you see now is extra credits on top; Perplexity states neither their size nor their end date.
The real risk is spend you cannot predict. The Teammates help article says complex projects use more credits, “particularly when agents run in parallel, work with large files or codebases, or run frequent automations”. Auto-refill is a setting, so going past $200 only happens if you turn it on. Look at the Usage page before anything else. See also what AI agents cost a small business.
The only cheap way to check fit is the refund window: 24 hours on monthly plans, 48 on annual (not EU, UK, Turkey, South Korea, Brazil).
Hand-off readiness check: six questions before you give it ongoing work
The Hand-off readiness check: six questions with pass conditions, to run before any agent gets a standing job. One fail means narrow the job or skip the agent.
Is the trigger clock-based or event-based?
Pass: something other than the clock triggers it. Clock only means a scheduled automation does it for far less.
What is the smallest permission set it needs?
Pass: you can list it. Perplexity says teammates use plugins with the same permissions as you, and to select only the repositories the teammate needs. See what access an AI agent should have.
What must it never do without asking?
Pass: a written approval rule. In a Zapier/Centiment survey of 518 US executives at firms with 100+ employees (fielded July 2026, published 2026-09-08, vendor-commissioned), 52% bring in human approval based on whether an action can be undone. Gate on reversibility, not importance. See AI agent permission to act without asking.
How will you see what it did?
Pass: a log you will read. Each teammate has one persistent thread. Zapier's AutomationBench post (2026-10-28, no Perplexity model on it) names “false confidence” as a failure mode: the agent reports success while the data says otherwise.
What does a bad week cost?
Pass: you know your credit ceiling and auto-refill is off. Zapier's spend-cap template alerts at 75% of a limit; copy that pattern, it is not a Perplexity feature. More in AI agent spending limits.
What is the exit?
Pass: you know how to stop or reassign it, and whether the refund window is still open.
Teammates vs a scheduled Zap vs other agent tools (decision table)
Caution: Zapier sells scheduled automation and competes with Perplexity in agents, so its framing favors Zaps. Our table is generic, built from the job type rather than any vendor's pricing.
| Job | Trigger | Judgement needed | Risk if it errs | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduled summary | Clock | Low | Low | Zap or Make scenario |
| New-lead follow-up | Event | Medium | Customer-facing | Zap with approval; agent if replies vary |
| Deadline chasing | Event plus date | Medium | Medium | Agent territory, with approval before send |
| Monthly report | Clock | Low to medium | Low | Scheduled automation |
| Watch and decide | Event | High | Varies | Agent territory, if you can review it |
A teammate draws on Max credits; a Zap is priced by tasks or operations; agent tools such as Lindy and AI by Zapier use credits or tasks (check each vendor). Zapier's COO wrote on 2026-10-29: “If a task follows the same steps every time, deterministic automation does it more reliably for a fraction of the cost.”
To sort your own jobs, start with how to tell if a task needs AI or just automation and Zapier MCP vs Zaps.
When to skip it
Skip Perplexity Teammates if any of these is true:
- You are not on Max and only want Teammates: a $200 a month decision for a preview.
- The job is clock-based. Perplexity's own Slack-summary example is what a scheduled automation does.
- You cannot accept a per-run credit cost Perplexity has not published.
- Mistakes are expensive and you cannot review them: money movement, customer-facing sends.
- You need a vendor with a record. This product is days old.
The independent evidence is one Reddit thread, “Perplexity Teammates - worth it?”, in r/perplexity_ai (2026-11-06, five comments per an archive copy). One commenter wrote “dont upgrade just for teammates”, noting Max may be worth it for other features. Another wrote “I’ve replaced grokbot with teammate”, with no use case. That is one comment each, so a thin signal, not a trend.
If you still want to try it: a low-risk first week
This is a suggestion, not something we did. Inside the refund window: one teammate, one narrow job, read-only access to one tool, approval before it sends anything, auto-refill off. Check the Usage page after each run and note what it did against what you expected. Then rerun the six questions. If it fails 1 or 5, cancel. How to monitor AI automations covers what to log.
FAQ
What is an AI teammate?
An AI teammate is a named agent that owns ongoing work instead of answering one-off prompts. Perplexity's version has a persistent thread and memory across runs.
What does Perplexity integrate with?
Per Perplexity's help center, teammates connect to Slack, GitHub, Linear and Gmail through plugins, and can also use sites without a connector. They follow the permissions of the plugins you install.
Is Perplexity Teammates free?
No, not on its own. For a promotional period, every Max plan includes a promotional credit grant for teammates, per the product page as of 2026-11-08. Afterwards teammates use the credits included in Max. Teammates is for individual Max subscribers only, not Pro. The grant's size and end date are not stated.
Are teammates safe with my logins?
Perplexity says each teammate has a separate environment and encrypted credentials it cannot view. These are unverified vendor claims. Review requested permissions before approving.
Does anyone use Perplexity anymore?
Perplexity has not published usage figures for Teammates, so there is nothing to cite.
Is Perplexity better than Copilot?
There is no head-to-head evidence, so no verdict.
Next step
Unsure you need an agent? Start with do you need an AI agent, then run the six questions on your own job. Last checked 2026-11-08. We will update this page as Perplexity publishes teammate credit details.