openclaw/docs/providers/perplexity-provider.md

title, summary, read_when

title	summary	read_when
Perplexity (Provider)	Perplexity web search provider setup (API key, search modes, filtering)	You want to configure Perplexity as a web search provider You need the Perplexity API key or OpenRouter proxy setup

Perplexity (Web Search Provider)

The Perplexity plugin provides web search capabilities through the Perplexity Search API or Perplexity Sonar via OpenRouter.

This page covers the Perplexity **provider** setup. For the Perplexity **tool** (how the agent uses it), see [Perplexity tool](/perplexity).

• Type: web search provider (not a model provider)
• Auth: PERPLEXITY_API_KEY (direct) or OPENROUTER_API_KEY (via OpenRouter)
• Config path: tools.web.search.perplexity.apiKey

Quick start

1. Set the API key:

openclaw config set tools.web.search.perplexity.apiKey "pplx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"

2. The agent will automatically use Perplexity for web searches when configured.

Search modes

The plugin auto-selects the transport based on API key prefix:

Key prefix	Transport	Features
pplx-	Native Perplexity Search API	Structured results, domain/language/date filters
sk-or-	OpenRouter (Sonar)	AI-synthesized answers with citations

Native API filtering

When using the native Perplexity API (pplx- key), searches support:

• Country: 2-letter country code
• Language: ISO 639-1 language code
• Date range: day, week, month, year
• Domain filters: allowlist/denylist (max 20 domains)
• Content budget: max_tokens, max_tokens_per_page

Environment note

If the Gateway runs as a daemon (launchd/systemd), make sure PERPLEXITY_API_KEY is available to that process (for example, in ~/.openclaw/.env or via env.shellEnv).