Perplexity cuts Agent API prices at every effort level and adds an "ultra" level

Perplexity says every effort level of its Agent API now costs less with the same or higher research quality, and adds a new ultra level for the most demanding, long-running requests. Effort levels are bundled agent configurations, optimized for specific tasks; developers choose among fast, low, medium, high, xhigh and ultra.

Perplexity's own figures:

• medium: score up from 55% to 77% on BrowseComp and DSQA, with almost 90% lower cost.
• xhigh: held 76.5% on WANDR, Perplexity's benchmark for long, multi-entity research, at 75% lower cost than in August.
• ultra: the highest WANDR score, 85.9%. It runs three research agents in parallel while a fourth orchestrates, assigns tasks and merges the findings. Each child agent runs its own research loop with a separate context, its own model, tools and step budget.