Ask HN: Who is still using Perplexity?

I use Perplexity for quick searches and sanity check answers because its native macOS popup window is by far the best user experience out of all of them: quick to launch, well designed, and pleasant to use.

I still use some others services and apps, but for much different purposes and results. For example I always turn to Gemini if I know what I want to do is mine Google web abd image search results (eg. https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@gingerbeardman/1146277358277...).

ChatGPT and Copilot are pretty good native macOS experiences but not as good as Perplexity. And I'm not aware of any other native macOS apps (Claude, Meta, etc)

I'm a paying user and I use Perplexity permanently, and it is very useful for every topic I use it for. While ChatGPT and other AI models have incorporated web search capabilities, from my humble point of view, Perplexity maintains distinct advantages, particularly for users like me focused on research and accuracy. As a pro user I can also select from multiple models, including ChatGPT, but I more often use Perplexity's own models and Claude.

agree even langgraph has may tool for web search, so now it's like school project.

I do have a tab open. Over a week since my last query to perplexity. It still has the best layout of all AI ive tried.

It has never been my go-to AI.

Claude I have never used directly, it's always secondary like Pycharm.

My LLM rankings:

1. Chatgpt and grok

3. Deepseek R1 Qwen3 8b hybrid.

4. meta ai in messenger

5. IBM granite 3.2 8b

6. Google Gemma 9B

7. Mixtral

I need a better video card :)

Right now I am monkeying around with Deepseek r1 qwen3 235B with a context window of 20,000. 1 eternity later...