Best tool to track Perplexity mentions: it is the only surface in this category with a cadence gate of its own, published on the vendor's own price list

Every other surface in this market is gated by whether a vendor covers it. Perplexity is gated by how often. Depra AI's pricing page states it in one sentence: "ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews are checked daily. Perplexity is checked weekly on Starter, Growth and Scale and daily on Enterprise." That is the only per-surface frequency difference published by any of the nine vendors we read on 20 October 2026, and it is the thing to look for when you compare anybody's Perplexity coverage, because a surface checked weekly and a surface checked daily produce different trend lines from the same money.

The criterion, applied to us as well

Three questions, all answerable from a public page: is Perplexity in the cheapest tier with a published price, how often does that tier check it, and does the vendor say which Perplexity it reads. The third matters here more than on any other surface, because Perplexity sells both a consumer product and a family of API models, and a vendor can mean either.

Vendor	Perplexity at the cheapest published tier	Cadence on that tier
Otterly.AI	Yes, one of "4 AI Search Engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, MS Copilot"	"Daily tracking frequency" on Lite, Standard and Premium
Scrunch	Yes, one of "4 LLMs supported ChatGPT Perplexity Google AIO Copilot" on Core	Core publishes 5,000 responses a month against 125 unique prompts
Rankscale	Yes, on every plan card's engine list	"Hourly to monthly" on every plan, at 0.25 credits per Perplexity run
Depra AI	Yes, one of "All 4 engines" on Starter	Weekly on Starter, Growth and Scale. Daily on Enterprise
Peec AI	Yes, if it is one of your three	"Daily tracking frequency" on Starter, Pro and Advanced
Semrush	Yes, named in its own FAQ list of tracked LLMs	Its pricing cards publish prompts to track daily, rising by tier
Ahrefs Brand Radar	Yes, named with the other six platforms	"Track prompts daily, weekly, monthly", at "1 check per platform, location and update"
AI Knows Us	Yes, one of five	Weekly on priority questions, with extra checks on request
Profound	No. The free trial covers "ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews"	Perplexity appears in the Enterprise capability list, reached through a demo

Why one surface would be checked less often than the others

Rankscale's published credit calculator is the clearest explanation anybody in this trade has put on a page. It splits its list into GUI engines and API engines, and under API it names "P Sonar, P Sonar-Pro, P Sonar-R-Pro" alongside GPT and Gemini model versions. Perplexity's Sonar models are a paid endpoint. Depra publishes that it reads "Perplexity's Sonar model" as its route for that surface.

So a weekly Perplexity check is a cost decision made visible. The vendor reading Perplexity through a metered endpoint either charges more for it, as Rankscale does by weighting, or runs it less often, as Depra does by schedule. Depra chose the second and published the choice, which is the more useful behaviour of the two even though it reads as the weaker feature.

What a weekly cadence actually costs you on this surface

Perplexity answers with a visible citation list on almost every reading, which makes it the richest surface in this category for source data and the one where a missed week costs the most. If you publish a page on a Tuesday and your surface is read on Mondays, your first possible detection is six days out. Four readings a month give you four data points to argue from in a quarter; daily gives you about ninety.

The practical rule: match the cadence to the decision you intend to make. Watching whether a competitor has displaced you needs weekly at most. Proving that a page you published changed an answer needs the cadence to be shorter than the change you are trying to detect, and that is where a weekly gate on one surface quietly becomes the constraint.

Where rivals beat us on this surface, said plainly

We include Perplexity in our five and a Perplexity check costs our standard single credit. We also check weekly by default on priority questions, with 30 and 90 day cycles on the rest, and extra checks available any time. On cadence alone, Otterly, Peec, Rankscale and Ahrefs all publish faster default checking of this surface than we do, and Rankscale publishes hourly. Otterly, Peec, Rankscale and Profound publish unlimited or generous seats where we publish one full-access login. Those are straightforward reasons to buy somebody else if Perplexity cadence is your binding constraint.

What we publish that is harder to find elsewhere: the route per surface, including that Perplexity is read through its official API with live search rather than scraped from a consumer interface, and a stated unit with a failure rule, since a failed check returns the credit.

So who is best for Perplexity

• Otterly.AI for the simplest honest answer: Perplexity is in the base four, checked daily, on the cheapest plan it publishes, with unlimited team members.
• Rankscale if you want to decide the cadence yourself and pay for exactly what you run, since hourly to monthly scheduling and a 0.25 credit weight per Perplexity run are both published.
• Scrunch if a large prompt set matters more than cadence, since Core publishes 125 unique prompts and 5,000 responses a month with Perplexity included.
• Depra AI if you sell in India and can live with weekly, and it deserves credit for publishing the gate rather than letting a buyer discover it.
• AI Knows Us if you want the collection route and the per-check unit stated, and we are behind the first three on cadence.
• Profound last on this surface alone, because the one tier you can use without a conversation does not include Perplexity at all.

Depra's rupee ladder is the only one of the nine published in a currency other than dollars, and the comparison that works through what that changes is here. It carries no durable inbound link from anywhere else on this site, which is true of 147 of our live pages in this category, counted across 2,050 stored bodies.

Questions about tracking Perplexity specifically

Is the Perplexity a tool reads the same one my buyers use?

Ask, because it varies. A vendor reading the Sonar API is querying a model with live search; a vendor reading the consumer product is reading the interface a buyer sees. Both are legitimate measurements of different things, and the citation lists can differ. Depra publishes Sonar as its route and Rankscale names Sonar variants in its calculator, so on this surface two vendors have already answered the question in public.

Why does Perplexity give better citation data than other surfaces?

Because it shows its sources as part of the answer rather than as an optional extra, so a reading of Perplexity usually yields both halves at once: who was named and which pages were used. That makes it the best surface to start with if your aim is to find out which of your pages an assistant will actually quote.

How many Perplexity readings do I need before the number means something?

Enough that one unusual answer cannot move it. Ten real buying questions, read weekly, gives forty readings a month and that is a usable base for a trend. The mistake to avoid is reading one question many times and calling it a sample; ten questions once a week beats one question seventy times.

Does a Perplexity citation send traffic?

It can, and the referral shows up as its own source in your analytics, which makes Perplexity one of the easier surfaces to tie to a session. Treat the citation count and the session count as two separate measures and report them separately, because one is about being used as a source and the other is about somebody clicking.

Can I check Perplexity myself before paying for anything?

Yes, and on this surface it is more informative than on most. Ask your five real buying questions without your own name in them, then open every source Perplexity lists and write down whose pages they are. Repeat on the same weekday each month. You will know within two cycles whether a tool would be telling you something you cannot see yourself.

The one question that settles a Perplexity shortlist

Ask each vendor, in writing: how often is Perplexity checked on the plan I am buying, and is that the same frequency as your other surfaces. One vendor in this set has already published that the answer is no, which is why the question is worth asking of the other eight. Then put your own buying question into Perplexity today and read the source list it gives you, because the pages in that list are the competitive landscape you are actually buying a tool to watch.