Perplexity Scraper & Perplexity Search API: Answers, Citations

Give it a list of questions and get one row per question: Perplexity's answer (Markdown), every source it cites (rank, URL, title, domain), the cited domains in order, and the web searches it ran. Add your brand and domain to see whether Perplexity names your brand and cites your site, and at which rank.

A Perplexity scraper alternative: no browser, no proxies, no CAPTCHAs, no Perplexity account. Questions run five at a time, a few seconds each. You only pay for questions that got an answer, plus a small start fee per run.

Where the answers come from: this Actor calls the Perplexity Sonar API (model sonar, with live web search) through a commercial data API. It does not read the perplexity.ai website. Answers from the API can differ from what you see in the perplexity.ai app (other models, Pro search, your account history and location all change the answer).

Typical uses

• AI search visibility (GEO / AEO): is your brand named, is your site cited, at which rank, for the questions your buyers ask?
• Competitor research: citedDomains shows which sites Perplexity relies on for your topic: the pages to beat or to get mentioned on.
• Answers with sources for your app or agent: Perplexity search as plain JSON, with the citations kept apart from the text.
• Weekly reports: schedule a run and send the rows to Google Sheets, Looker Studio, Slack, n8n, Make or Zapier.

What you get for each question

Field	Description
question	The question asked
answer, answerLength	Perplexity's answer as Markdown; its markers [1], [2]... match citations.rank
citations	Each source: rank, url, title, domain (up to 30)
citedDomains	Domains cited, in order, without duplicates
fanOutQueries	Web searches Perplexity ran for the answer, when the API gives them
webSearchUsed, model	Whether the web was searched; the model that answered (sonar)
brandMentioned	Your brand appears as a whole word in the answer (only with brand)
domainCited, domainCitationRank	Your domain or a subdomain is cited, and its position among the cited domains, 1 = first (only with domain)
inputTokens, outputTokens, maxOutputTokens	Size of the question and the answer, and the bound you set
found, status, message	ANSWERED for a billed row; free rows say why: EMPTY_ANSWER, UNREADABLE, REJECTED, PROVIDER_ERROR, NOT_CHECKED
country, checkedAt	Country of the web search; when the question was asked

Missing values are null, never guessed.

Input

{
  "queries": ["What is the best CRM for small businesses?", "Which project management tools do agencies recommend?"],
  "country": "US",
  "maxOutputTokens": 800,
  "brand": "Asana",
  "domain": "asana.com"
}

• queries: up to 200 questions per run, 1 to 500 characters each. Each question is one answer.
• country (default US): country whose web results Perplexity searches. US, GB, CA, AU, IE, IN, DE, AT, CH, FR, BE, ES, MX, IT, NL, PT, BR, PL, SE, JP.
• maxOutputTokens (default 800, 100 to 2,048): upper bound on the answer length. The price per answer does not change.
• brand, domain (optional): your brand name and your website for the visibility fields.

Pricing

Pay per event, no subscription (see the Pricing tab for the current prices):

• Answer returned: once per question that got a non-empty answer.
• A small Actor start fee per run.

Empty answers, questions the data source refused or failed, and questions not reached (budget or timeout) get a free row with found: false and the reason. The run never spends more than the maximum cost you set.

Free Apify plan: each run asks the first 3 questions, so you can test the output. A paid Apify plan removes this limit.

Good to know

• Answers vary from one run to the next, even for the same question: track trends over several runs, not a single answer.
• Answers come from the Perplexity Sonar API with web search, not from the perplexity.ai interface; they can differ from the app.
• For ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode answers, use AI Visibility Tracker; for Google AI Overviews, AI Overview Tracker.
• Not affiliated with Perplexity AI.

Run summary

Each run stores a summary in the key-value store (OUTPUT): questions asked, empty answers, answers billed, and anything skipped because of the free-plan or budget limit.

Use it from code, automations or AI agents

API (one call, results returned directly):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/plainrows~perplexity-search-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries": ["What is the best CRM for small businesses?"]}'

n8n, Make, Zapier: use the Apify integration, pick plainrows/perplexity-search-api, schedule it and send the rows to Google Sheets or Slack.

AI agents (MCP tool): add https://mcp.apify.com?tools=plainrows/perplexity-search-api to Claude, Cursor or any MCP client, then ask "What does Perplexity answer to these questions, and which sites does it cite?".

FAQ

Is this a Perplexity search API? Yes: one call per list of questions, JSON rows back with the answer and its sources, usable from the Apify API, n8n, Make, Zapier or as an MCP tool.

Is it the same as the perplexity.ai website? No. It uses the official Perplexity Sonar model with web search. The website may use other models and personal context, so its answer can differ.

How do I check if Perplexity cites my site? Put your site in domain. domainCited and domainCitationRank answer it question by question; citedDomains shows who is cited instead.

Do I pay for empty answers or errors? No. Only questions with a non-empty answer are charged, plus the start fee.

More PlainRows tools

Same pay-per-result pricing, same clean JSON, built to chain together in n8n, Make, Zapier or AI agents.

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