Perplexity AI Stats Feb 2026: Uses, Users, Market Share, and More.
Daniel Trick
Feb 20, 2026
8 min read
Perplexity is one of the more unique AI-powered tools available today. Unlike ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok, Perplexity focuses on being an AI answer engine.
It’s designed to be used like a traditional search engine, but the results and answers are generated by LLMs to provide more context.
Introducing Model Council in Perplexity.
Run three frontier models at once, compare outputs, and get a more accurate, higher‑confidence answer.
Available now on web only for Perplexity Max subscribers. pic.twitter.com/SwJhUj5rJR
— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) February 5, 2026
As such, it’s seen meteoric growth since starting in 2022 – but how does it fare in the wider AI market?
These Perplexity AI usage stats will tell you everything you need to know.
Key Perplexity AI Usage Statistics
- Perplexity AI hit over 780 million queries in 2025
- Monthly active users for Perplexity exceed 33 million
- Perplexity is now the main driving force behind Snapchat’s AI
- Perplexity gets around 240 million monthly visits
- There are around 2 million daily active users
Perplexity AI Active Users & Monthly Traffic Data
Perplexity has seen a dramatic increase in active users over the last two years. While the company itself hasn’t posted any concrete information for 2026, recent reports suggest that around 33 million monthly active users head to this platform to conduct searches.
Moreover, you will see about 2 million daily active users flocking to Perplexity AI to carry out regular search queries.
Despite Perplexity itself not broadcasting any official data, we can look at a post from 2024 where the company stated it had 10 million monthly active users. Based on the most recent data taken from multiple sources, we can deduce that the platform has more than doubled its active user base in under two years – impressive!
When looking at SimilarWeb’s traffic analysis for the perplexity.ai website, we can see a few key data points:
- 170 million people visited the Perplexity website in January 2026 (this was down 5.31% from the previous month)
- 86.43% of all traffic came from desktop devices
- Users spend an average of 4 minutes 45 seconds on the website
- Of all social media channels, YouTube accounted for 56.92% of Perplexity’s monthly traffic
One other insightful aspect of this analysis tells us the top referring industries for web traffic to the Perplexity platform. In other words, this looks at the industries that direct traffic to this website:
- 14.81% – Programming and Developer Software
- 10.42% – Marketplace
- 9.16% – AI Chatbots and Tools
- 8.57% – Search Engines
Looking at that, we can see that websites focused on Programming and Developer Software are the biggest source of Perplexity recommendations. It’s perhaps a quick little insight into who finds this platform the most useful.
Perplexity AI Demographics – Who Uses It The Most?
Following on from the discussion above, SimlarWeb’s analysis also breaks down which countries tend to use Perplexity the most. This helps us understand the general demographic, and it looks like this:
| Country | Traffic Share | Monthly Change |
| USA | 18.77% | -1.05% |
| India | 15.26% | -16.29% |
| Germany | 5.29% | +10.83% |
| Russia | 4.78% | -7.96% |
| France | 4.04% | +0.31% |
Seeing both the US and India in the top spots isn’t surprising, but the final three are rather shocking.
When carrying out the same research for other AI platforms, most tend to include Japan, Brazil, Korea or sometimes the United Kingdom.
Having Germany and France in the top five – and with monthly traffic increases, no less – gives a fascinating look at which countries seem to adopt Perplexity over other AI tools.
But what about sex and age distribution amongst users?
Tenet has compiled some excellent research into these areas of user demographics, displaying some key findings when it comes to the percentage of male and female Perplexity users:
- 60.19% male users
- 39.81% female users
To be honest, this falls roughly in line with what we expect, as the majority of big AI platforms lean towards male users. Still, a near 60/40 split is up there with one of the biggest we’ve seen – Grok is perhaps the only well-known platform to have a larger majority of male users.
When it comes to user age distribution, it’s another similar story:
| Age Group | Percentage of Users |
| 18-24 | 20.22% |
| 25-34 | 33.02% |
| 35-44 | 19.67% |
| 45-54 | 13.63% |
| 55-64 | 8.26% |
| 65+ | 5.20% |
The 25-34 age group is the most dominant for Perplexity, which is fairly accurate across every AI platform we’ve looked at so far. Similarly, the majority of users are within the first two age groups, accounting for 53.24% of all users.
Common Ways People Use Perplexity AI
A study from Cornell University reveals some highly interesting ideas about how people use Perplexity AI. Researchers analysed the platform and considered how to categorise different queries, unearthing the following:
- 55% of queries were for personal use
- 30% of queries were for professional use
- 15% of queries were for educational use
The study also broke down queries based on topics and subtopics, identifying six main topics:
- Productivity & Workflow
- Learning & Research
- Media & Entertainment
- Shopping & Commerce
- Travel & Leisure
- Job & Career
Each one includes various subtopics – for example, Document & Form Editing was the number one subtopic within Productivity & Workflow, while Flights & Transportation was number one in Travel and Leisure. You can find full insights into everything in the document here.
There’s almost too much to go through right now, but the table below breaks down the Perplexity AI use cases based on the six main topics:
| Topic | Percentage of all queries |
| Productivity & Workflow | 36.2% |
| Learning & Research | 20.8% |
| Media & Entertainment | 15.8% |
| Shopping & Commerce | 10% |
| Travel & Leisure | 7.1% |
| Job & Career | 6.7% |
| Other | 3.4% |
What this shows us is that over a third of all queries on Perplexity (at least, within this study) were related to productivity and workflow in some capacity. We can actually break things down further within the number one category for you:
| Productivity & Workflow | |
| Subtopic | Percentage of queries |
| Document & Form Editing | 21.5% |
| Account Management | 20.5% |
| Email Management | 15.8% |
| Spreadsheet & Data Editing | 11.1% |
| Computer Programming | 10.3% |
| Investments & Banking | 6.2% |
| Multimedia Editing | 6.1% |
| Project Management | 5.1% |
Please keep in mind that the percentages within this table only look at Productivity & Workflow queries. Effectively, 21.5% of queries within this topic relate to Document & Form Editing – and so on.
Notably, Perplexity has a particularly strong showing in financial and investment use cases owing to Perplexity Finance.
Users can leverage the power of AI to track market updates, query investment prospects and more, providing a real standout use case compared to other AI models.
New feature on Perplexity Finance: S&P 500 heatmap. Mouse over any cell to see a live-updating explanation of why the stock or sector is up/down. https://t.co/xUHgy2f7nH pic.twitter.com/fbTbo8aiau
— Jeff Grimes (@jeffgrimes9) February 2, 2026
Perplexity AI Market Share & Platform Comparisons
How does Perplexity AI match up against some of the more well-known AI platforms in the world? As mentioned earlier, the AICPB puts its monthly active users at just over 33 million – a quick look below shows how this stacks up against other brands:
| Product | MAU | Monthly Growth |
| ChatGPT | 930.53 million | +5.15% |
| DeepSeek | 129.64 million | -1.40% |
| Google Gemini | 106.21 million | +8.88% |
| Grok | 78.48 million | +7.90% |
| Meta AI | 36.32 million | +3.80% |
| Perplexity | 33.95 million | -1.25% |
| Microsoft Copilot | 19.29 million | +3.19% |
| Claude | 8.36 million | +13.40% |
The big takeaway here is that it’s the only non-Chinese AI to see stagnant growth at the start of 2026. All of the other big players are growing quite substantially month-on-month, but Perplexity seems to have hit a brick wall.
This is further emphasised when looking at the latest AI market share statistics from Trending Topics:
| AI Platforms | Market Share |
| ChatGPT | 64.5% |
| Gemini | 21.5% |
| DeepSeek | 3.7% |
| Grok | 3.4% |
| Perplexity | 2.0% |
These stats don’t tell the full story, however. Just three months ago, Perplexity held a 2.4% market share – and a year ago it was ahead of Grok with just a 1.9% market share. So, while it has technically increased its percentage market share in the last twelve months (albeit by 0.1%), it is no longer fourth in the table.
Furthermore, when you look at the monthly website traffic trends across some of the biggest US-based AI platforms, Perplexity falls behind everyone yet again:
| Website | Monthly Traffic |
| ChatGPT | 5.723 billion |
| Gemini | 2.06 billion |
| Grok | 314 million |
| OpenAI | 210 million |
| Claude | 202.9 million |
| Perplexity | 170 million |
Perplexity AI Usage Stats – A Summary
The running theme from these Perplexity AI usage stats is that the platform is growing and has more monthly active users now than twelve months ago.
However, this growth isn’t in line with what other AI platforms are seeing.
The likes of Grok and Claude continue to see impressive developments that either take over or eat into Perplexity’s market share.
It remains to be seen what this means for Perplexity as a platform, though perhaps its attempt to fill a search engine niche will result in stagnant growth.
In the ongoing arms race of AI market share, not every company can be a market leader.
Become a Pro at SEO
Join 65,000 others and learn the secrets to SEO success with our weekly blog posts.
