Basic web search: chat v API

UnclePauly
Tue, 24 Mar 2026 10:50:08 +0000
General

Hi, newcomer to Perplexity here. I’m here because OpenAI couldn’t do web searching very well.

I’ve been playing around with the free chat and Perplexity is doing does brilliantly well. I’m asking it to summarise current events using prompts like

“Using live web searching and the latest news reports, summarise the latest events in the Iran / US war in a single paragraph and create a .txt file for download with the results”

The results have been impressive…truly.

Before we sign up for pro – I wanted to check, can we achieve everything we’ve been able to do in the chat interface via the API?

Forgive the caution – but some AI companies’ APIs are a subset of what’s available in chat – I need to be sure. If you’re interested we’re basically creating a WordPress plugin for a newsdesk that takes inputs via a form, creates a JSON request and sends a prompt (like the one above) to Perplexity.

3 posts - 2 participants