Perplexity Search Images Scraper

Search Perplexity's public Images view with one query or a batch of queries. The Actor captures Perplexity's structured media_items response when available, uses the rendered page as a fallback, normalizes the records, and removes duplicates across the run.

Input

• mode: single or batch.
• query: one image-search query. In batch mode it is included first when supplied.
• queries: additional queries for batch mode.
• maxItems: global record limit across all queries (1–500).
• maxPages: image-result batches loaded per query (1–5).
• includeInlineAnswerImages: include usable images rendered in the answer as a DOM fallback.
• language and country: align locale and browser fingerprint settings.
• maxConcurrency, retry, navigation, result-wait, and handler timeout controls.
• proxyConfiguration: optional Apify or custom proxy configuration.

Example single query:

{
  "mode": "single",
  "query": "northern lights photography",
  "maxItems": 10,
  "maxPages": 1,
  "language": "en-US",
  "country": "US",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

Example batch:

{
  "mode": "batch",
  "queries": [
    "northern lights photography",
    "Eiffel Tower night photography"
  ],
  "maxItems": 20,
  "maxConcurrency": 1
}

Output

Every stored record includes a stable id, position, query, full image URL, thumbnail, title, result type, page, search engine, and scrape timestamp. When Perplexity supplies them, records also contain the source page/domain, source title, dimensions, aspect ratio, pixel count, format, MIME type, orientation, creator/license fields, and extraction metadata.

Unavailable optional fields are omitted instead of stored as null or empty strings. Raw API payloads, cookies, tokens, authorization data, and challenge pages are never stored.

Proxy guidance

Direct access is the current working default. Perplexity may reject some proxy exit pools; a US Residential test returned HTTP 403 while a direct Apify Cloud run succeeded. Proxy support remains available for users whose target geography or network requires it. Keep maxConcurrency at 1 for anonymous public searches unless higher concurrency has been validated for your environment.

Failure behavior

• HTTP status and content type are validated before HTML or JSON processing.
• Malformed and unexpected API payloads are rejected safely.
• Explicit Cloudflare challenges, CAPTCHA pages, and sign-in requirements are classified as TARGET_BLOCKED, are not retried, and do not create dataset records.
• A genuine “No images match this query” response completes with an empty dataset.
• Temporary browser, proxy, rate-limit, and server failures use bounded retries.

The Actor does not solve CAPTCHAs or bypass authentication and other access controls.