Overview

Perplexity is an OpenAI-compatible API with built-in web search capabilities and reasoning support. Bifrost performs conversions including:

OpenAI-compatible base - Uses OpenAI’s chat format as foundation
Web search parameters - Search mode, domain filters, recency filters, and location-based search
Reasoning effort mapping - reasoning.effort mapped to Perplexity’s reasoning_effort with special handling for “minimal”
Search results inclusion - Citations, search results, and videos included in response
Special usage tracking - Citation tokens, search queries, and reasoning tokens tracked separately

Supported Operations

Operation	Non-Streaming	Streaming	Endpoint
Chat Completions	✅	✅	`/chat/completions`
Responses API	✅	✅	`/chat/completions`
Text Completions	❌	❌	-
Embeddings	❌	❌	-
Image Generation	❌	❌	-
Speech (TTS)	❌	❌	-
Transcriptions (STT)	❌	❌	-
Files	❌	❌	-
Batch	❌	❌	-
List Models	❌	❌	-

Unsupported Operations (❌): Text Completions, Embeddings, Image Generation, Speech, Transcriptions, Files, Batch, and List Models are not supported by the upstream Perplexity API. These return UnsupportedOperationError.

Setup & Configuration

Configure Perplexity as a provider.

Web UI
config.json
API
Go SDK

Navigate to Models > Model Providers. Look for Perplexity under Configured Providers. If it is missing, click on Add New Provider and select Perplexity.
Click Add Key or edit an existing key.
Set a name for your key.
Paste your API key directly or use an environment variable (for example, env.PERPLEXITY_API_KEY).
Set Allowed Models to All Models (default) or the specific model allowlist you want this key to serve.
Save the provider configuration.

{
  "providers": {
    "perplexity": {
      "keys": [
        {
          "name": "perplexity-key-1",
          "value": "env.PERPLEXITY_API_KEY",
          "models": [
            "*"
          ],
          "weight": 1.0
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

curl --location 'http://localhost:8080/api/providers' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
  "provider": "perplexity",
  "keys": [
    {
      "name": "perplexity-key-1",
      "value": "env.PERPLEXITY_API_KEY",
      "models": [
        "*"
      ],
      "weight": 1.0
    }
  ]
}'

case schemas.Perplexity:
    return []schemas.Key{{
        Name:   "perplexity-key-1",
        Value:  *schemas.NewEnvVar("env.PERPLEXITY_API_KEY"),
        Models: []string{"*"},
        Weight: 1.0,
    }}, nil

1. Chat Completions

Request Parameters

Perplexity supports most OpenAI chat completion parameters. For standard parameter reference, see OpenAI Chat Completions.

Perplexity-Specific Constraints

No function calling: tools and tool_choice are silently dropped
Dropped parameters: stop, logit_bias, logprobs, top_logprobs, seed, parallel_tool_calls, service_tier
Reasoning: Uses reasoning_effort instead of reasoning object (see Reasoning & Effort)

Perplexity-Specific Parameters

Use extra_params (SDK) or pass directly in request body (Gateway) for Perplexity-specific search and configuration fields:

Gateway
Go SDK

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "sonar",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "What is the latest news?"}],
    "search_mode": "web",
    "language_preference": "en",
    "return_images": true,
    "return_related_questions": true,
    "disable_search": false,
    "search_domain_filter": ["news.example.com"],
    "search_recency_filter": "week"
  }'

resp, err := client.ChatCompletionRequest(schemas.NewBifrostContext(ctx, schemas.NoDeadline), &schemas.BifrostChatRequest{
    Provider: schemas.Perplexity,
    Model:    "sonar",
    Input:    messages,
    Params: &schemas.ChatParameters{
        ExtraParams: map[string]interface{}{
            "search_mode": "web",
            "language_preference": "en",
            "return_images": true,
            "return_related_questions": true,
            "disable_search": false,
            "search_domain_filter": []string{"news.example.com"},
            "search_recency_filter": "week",
        },
    },
})

Search Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
`search_mode`	string	Search mode: `"web"`, `"academic"`, `"news"`, etc.
`language_preference`	string	Language preference (e.g., `"en"`, `"fr"`)
`search_domain_filter`	string[]	Restrict search to specific domains
`return_images`	boolean	Include images in search results
`return_related_questions`	boolean	Return related questions
`search_recency_filter`	string	Recency filter: `"hour"`, `"day"`, `"week"`, `"month"`, `"year"`
`search_after_date_filter`	string	Search results after date (ISO format)
`search_before_date_filter`	string	Search results before date (ISO format)
`last_updated_after_filter`	string	Content last updated after date
`last_updated_before_filter`	string	Content last updated before date
`disable_search`	boolean	Disable web search entirely
`enable_search_classifier`	boolean	Enable search classifier
`top_k`	integer	Top-k results to use

Media Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
`web_search_options`	object[]	Array of web search option configurations with user location support
`media_response.overrides.return_videos`	boolean	Return videos in results
`media_response.overrides.return_images`	boolean	Return images in results

Web Search Options

Configure detailed search behavior including location:

{
  "web_search_options": [
    {
      "search_context_size": "high",
      "user_location": {
        "latitude": 40.7128,
        "longitude": -74.0060,
        "city": "New York",
        "country": "US",
        "region": "NY"
      },
      "image_search_relevance_enhanced": true
    }
  ]
}

Reasoning & Effort

Parameter Mapping

reasoning.effort → reasoning_effort
Supported efforts: "low", "medium", "high"
Special conversion: "minimal" → "low" (Perplexity normalizes to low/medium/high)
reasoning.max_tokens is silently dropped (Perplexity doesn’t support token budget control)

Example

// Request
{"reasoning": {"effort": "high"}}

// Perplexity conversion
{"reasoning_effort": "high"}

// Special case: "minimal" effort
{"reasoning": {"effort": "minimal"}}
→ {"reasoning_effort": "low"}

Response Conversion

Search Results Inclusion

Perplexity responses include additional fields for search integration:

citations[] - Source citations from search
search_results[] - Full search results with metadata
videos[] - Video results from search

These fields are preserved in the Bifrost response for client use.

Usage Details

Extended usage tracking specific to Perplexity:

Field	Source	Description
`completion_tokens_details.citation_tokens`	`usage.citation_tokens`	Tokens used for citations
`completion_tokens_details.num_search_queries`	`usage.num_search_queries`	Number of web search queries performed
`completion_tokens_details.reasoning_tokens`	`usage.reasoning_tokens`	Tokens consumed by reasoning process
`usage.cost`	`usage.cost`	Cost of the request

Example Response

{
  "id": "...",
  "choices": [...],
  "usage": {
    "prompt_tokens": 100,
    "completion_tokens": 150,
    "total_tokens": 250,
    "completion_tokens_details": {
      "citation_tokens": 25,
      "num_search_queries": 3,
      "reasoning_tokens": 40
    },
    "cost": { "prompt_cost": 0.001, "completion_cost": 0.002 }
  },
  "citations": ["https://example.com/article1", "https://example.com/article2"],
  "search_results": [
    {
      "title": "...",
      "url": "...",
      "snippet": "...",
      "date": "2025-01-15"
    }
  ],
  "videos": [
    {
      "title": "...",
      "url": "...",
      "duration": 300
    }
  ]
}

Streaming

Perplexity uses OpenAI-compatible streaming format. Event sequence:

chat.completion.chunk events with delta updates
Standard OpenAI finish reason mapping

Streaming with web search may return search results in final chunks.

Caveats

No Tool Support

Severity: High Behavior: Tool-related parameters are silently dropped Impact: Function calling not available Code: chat.go:8-36

Reasoning Effort Mapping

Severity: Medium Behavior: "minimal" effort is mapped to "low" (Perplexity only supports low/medium/high) Impact: Requested minimal effort becomes low effort Code: chat.go:30-36, responses.go:25-30

Reasoning Max Tokens Dropped

Severity: Low Behavior: reasoning.max_tokens is silently dropped Impact: No control over reasoning token budget Code: chat.go:29-36

Stop Sequences Not Supported

Severity: Low Behavior: stop parameter is silently dropped Impact: Stop sequences not enforced Code: chat.go:8-36

2. Responses API

The Responses API is adapted for Perplexity by converting to the Chat Completions format internally and returning results in Responses format.

Request Parameters

Parameter Mapping

Parameter	Transformation
`max_output_tokens`	Direct pass-through to `max_tokens`
`temperature`, `top_p`	Direct pass-through
`instructions`	Converted to system message (prepended)
`reasoning.effort`	Mapped to `reasoning_effort` (see Reasoning & Effort)
`text.format`	Passed through as `response_format`
`input` (string/array)	Converted to messages

Extra Parameters

Same Perplexity-specific search and configuration parameters as Chat Completions (see Perplexity-Specific Parameters).

Gateway
Go SDK

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/v1/responses \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "sonar",
    "instructions": "You are a helpful assistant with web search capabilities",
    "input": "What is the latest news in technology?",
    "search_mode": "news",
    "return_images": true
  }'

resp, err := client.ResponsesRequest(schemas.NewBifrostContext(ctx, schemas.NoDeadline), &schemas.BifrostResponsesRequest{
    Provider: schemas.Perplexity,
    Model:    "sonar",
    Input:    messages,
    Params: &schemas.ResponsesParameters{
        Instructions: schemas.Ptr("You are a helpful assistant with web search capabilities"),
        ExtraParams: map[string]interface{}{
            "search_mode": "news",
            "return_images": true,
        },
    },
})

Conversion Details

instructions becomes a system message prepended to input messages
input (string or array) converted to user message(s)
Response converted to Responses API format with same search results and extended usage details

Response Format

Same as Chat Completions with search results, citations, and extended usage tracking preserved.

Streaming

Responses streaming uses the same OpenAI-compatible streaming as Chat Completions, with results adapted to Responses format.

​Overview

​Supported Operations

​Setup & Configuration

​1. Chat Completions

​Request Parameters

​Perplexity-Specific Constraints

​Perplexity-Specific Parameters

​Search Parameters

​Media Parameters

​Web Search Options

​Reasoning & Effort

​Parameter Mapping

​Example

​Response Conversion

​Search Results Inclusion

​Usage Details

​Example Response

​Streaming

​Caveats

​2. Responses API

​Request Parameters

​Parameter Mapping

​Extra Parameters

​Conversion Details

​Response Format

​Streaming

Overview

Supported Operations

Setup & Configuration

1. Chat Completions

Request Parameters

Perplexity-Specific Constraints

Perplexity-Specific Parameters

Search Parameters

Media Parameters

Web Search Options

Reasoning & Effort

Parameter Mapping

Example

Response Conversion

Search Results Inclusion

Usage Details

Example Response

Streaming

Caveats

2. Responses API

Request Parameters

Parameter Mapping

Extra Parameters

Conversion Details

Response Format

Streaming