home / mcp / perplexity mcp server

Perplexity MCP Server

Bridges Perplexity web search and reasoning models to MCP-enabled assistants via stdio

Installation

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file.

Configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alcova-ai-perplexity-mcp": {
      "command": "perplexity-mcp",
      "args": [
        "--model",
        "sonar-pro",
        "--reasoning-model",
        "sonar-reasoning-pro"
      ],
      "env": {
        "PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

You deploy and run a Go-based MCP server that bridges the Perplexity API with your AI assistants, enabling real-time web search and advanced reasoning within Claude and Cursor interfaces. This server lets you configure Perplexity models for search and reasoning and exposes a simple MCP endpoint via a local stdio process to your client apps.

How to use

Connect your MCP client to the local Perplexity MCP server using the stdio interface. You run the server locally and point your client to the command that launches it, providing your Perplexity API key. You can configure which Perplexity models to use for search and reasoning and then start making requests from your MCP-enabled assistant to perform web searches and complex reasoning tasks through Perplexity’s Sonar models.

How to install

Prerequisites: you need the Go toolchain and, optionally, Homebrew if you prefer macOS/Linux package management.

# Install via Homebrew (macOS and Linux)
brew tap alcova-ai/tap
brew install perplexity-mcp

# Build from source
git clone https://github.com/Alcova-AI/perplexity-mcp.git
cd perplexity-mcp
go build -o perplexity-mcp-server .

# Run a prebuilt binary (from releases) is also supported

Additional sections

Configuration, security, and usage notes help you tailor the Perplexity MCP server to your setup.

Configuration and security

Environment variable: set your Perplexity API key through PERPLEXITY_API_KEY. This key is required to authenticate requests to Perplexity from the server.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter connectivity or authentication issues, verify that the Perplexity API key is correctly exported in your shell session and that the server is running with the expected models. Check that your MCP client is pointed to the local stdio interface started by the perplexity-mcp binary.

Available tools

perplexity_ask

Perplexity web search tool that retrieves up-to-date information using the Sonar Pro model.

perplexity_reason

Perplexity reasoning tool that performs complex reasoning tasks using the Sonar Reasoning Pro model.