Perplexity (Provider)

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.

Type: web search provider (not a model provider)
Auth: PERPLEXITY_API_KEY (direct) or OPENROUTER_API_KEY (via OpenRouter)
Config path: plugins.entries.perplexity.config.webSearch.apiKey

Quick start

Set the API key:

“`bash theme={“theme”:{“light”:”min-light”,”dark”:”min-dark”}}
openclaw configure –section web


Or set it directly:

```bash  theme={"theme":{"light":"min-light","dark":"min-dark"}}
openclaw config set plugins.entries.perplexity.config.webSearch.apiKey "pplx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"

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).