perplexity-cost-tuning

name	perplexity-cost-tuning
description	Optimize Perplexity costs through model routing, caching, token limits, and budget monitoring. Use when analyzing Perplexity billing, reducing API costs, or implementing budget alerts for Perplexity Sonar API. Trigger with phrases like "perplexity cost", "perplexity billing", "reduce perplexity costs", "perplexity pricing", "perplexity budget".
allowed-tools	Read, Grep
version	1.12.0
license	MIT
author	Jeremy Longshore <[e-mail]>
tags	["saas","perplexity","api","monitoring","cost-optimization"]
compatibility	Designed for Claude Code, also compatible with Codex and OpenClaw

Perplexity Cost Tuning

Overview

Reduce Perplexity Sonar API costs. Perplexity charges per-token (input + output) plus a per-request fee that varies by search context size. The biggest cost lever is model selection: sonar-pro costs 3-15x more than sonar per request.

Pricing Reference

Model	Input $/M tokens	Output $/M tokens	Request Fee
sonar	$1	$1	$5 per 1K requests
sonar-pro	$3	$15	$5 per 1K requests
sonar-reasoning-pro	$3	$15	$5 per 1K requests
sonar-deep-research	$2	$8	$5 per 1K searches

Search context size (Low/Medium/High) affects the request fee. More context = higher fee.

Prerequisites

• Perplexity API account with usage dashboard
• Understanding of query patterns in your application
• Cache infrastructure for search results

Instructions

Step 1: Route Queries to the Right Model

// 60-70% of queries can use sonar, saving 3-15x per query
function selectModel(query: string): "sonar" | "sonar-pro" {
  const simplePatterns = [
    /^what is/i, /^define/i, /^who is/i, /^when did/i,
    /current price/i, /^how many/i, /^is it true/i,
  ];
  if (simplePatterns.some((p) => p.test(query))) return ;

   complexPatterns = [
    , , ,
    , , ,
  ];
   (complexPatterns.( p.(query)))  ;

   ; 
}