Perplexity AI vs ChatGPT: The two popular AI chatbots compared after GPT-5 rollout

ChatGPT vs Perplexity

The release of GPT-5 has shifted the competitive landscape for AI chatbots, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT gaining significant upgrades in reasoning, accuracy, and safety. Meanwhile, Perplexity AI continues to focus on being a real-time, citation-driven research assistant. While both tools serve conversational and information needs, their strengths differ sharply, making them suitable for distinct use cases.

Model capability and accuracy

GPT-5 offers a substantial boost in complex reasoning, coding proficiency, and mathematical accuracy. OpenAI reports a reduction in hallucinations and improvements in structured problem-solving, thanks to its new “safe completions” framework. The model now powers ChatGPT by default across free and paid plans, with Pro subscribers accessing extended reasoning capabilities.

Perplexity, while not matching GPT-5’s raw computational performance, prioritizes trustworthiness in responses. Its answers are grounded in real-time search with inline citations, enabling users to verify claims quickly. This design minimizes the risk of unverified information, particularly in research settings.

Research and browsing capabilities

Perplexity AI’s core strength lies in live web integration. Every response includes citations, and its Deep Research feature conducts iterative searches, reads multiple sources, and synthesizes structured findings. This approach is ideal for academic research, market studies, and fact-driven reports.

ChatGPT benefits from GPT-5’s unified routing system, which balances quick answers with deeper analytical responses. While it can browse the web and cite sources, its default workflow emphasizes conversational assistance rather than persistent citation-first output.

Safety and reliability

Safety has been a major focus in GPT-5’s rollout. OpenAI’s testing and Microsoft’s enterprise-level evaluations have highlighted improvements in handling sensitive queries, preventing harmful outputs, and making limitations clearer to users.

Perplexity’s safety approach differs, relying on transparency through citations. By linking answers directly to sources, it reduces the chances of misinformation without heavy internal filtering.

Features and ecosystem

ChatGPT with GPT-5 supports advanced coding, writing, and long-form reasoning, and integrates with Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Azure AI tools. It’s available on web and mobile with varying model sizes for speed and cost efficiency.

Perplexity offers Pro Search, Library organization, a multimodal mobile assistant, and the Comet browser, which embeds its research-first design directly into web navigation.

Versatility

Perplexity AI allows users to choose between multiple AI models like Claude, Sonar, Gemini and even GPT-5,.if you are a Pro user and that makes it a better suited AI tool compared to ChatGPT.