Web-grounded research via Perplexity Sonar — natural-language questions, real source citations

Perplexity

Web-grounded research via Perplexity Sonar. Ask natural-language questions, get a synthesised answer plus the URLs Sonar cited as evidence.

Base URL: /v1/perplexity/...

Perplexity uses the same authentication and credit model as every other SocialCrawl endpoint — pass your x-api-key header, pay 1 credit per call, get a unified response envelope. The fact that the upstream is the Vercel AI Gateway → Perplexity Sonar is invisible to you.

Best for freeform questions like "what is the latest funding round for Anthropic?" or "summarise this week's biggest LLM releases" that need fresh, web-grounded answers — the kind of question a structured social-media call cannot answer.

Getting Started

1. Run a research query

curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/perplexity/research?query=what+is+the+capital+of+france" \
  -H "x-api-key: sc_your_api_key_here"

2. Read the answer + sources

{
  "success": true,
  "platform": "perplexity",
  "endpoint": "/v1/perplexity/research",
  "data": {
    "answer": "Paris is the capital of France.",
    "sources": [
      {
        "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris",
        "title": "Paris - Wikipedia"
      }
    ]
  },
  "credits_used": 1,
  "credits_remaining": 99,
  "request_id": "req-a1b2c3d4e5f6",
  "cached": false
}

data.sources is always an array. Empty arrays are legal — Sonar may answer one-line factual questions without citing.

Endpoints

1 endpoint available.

Endpoint	Path	Credit Tier
Web research via Perplexity Sonar	`/v1/perplexity/research`	standard (1cr)

Which grounded-research endpoint to use

Four endpoints answer questions off the open web, and they differ in what you get back rather than in what they can reach:

GET /v1/perplexity/research (1cr) — one synthesised answer with its citations. The cheapest way to ask a question in words and get an answer in words.
GET /v1/tavily/search (1cr) — ranked results you can filter by domain, date, and topic, with an optional written answer alongside them. Reach for it when you want the sources themselves, not just a conclusion.
GET /v1/web/search (2cr per 10 results) — web, news, and image results in the unified WebPageList shape, with the option to scrape each result inline.
GET /v1/prism/answers (15cr) — the same question sent to Perplexity, Grok, and Tavily at once, each answer kept verbatim, citations merged, plus a matrix of where they agree and disagree. Worth the price only when a single answer is not enough to act on.

Response Shape

Both fields are always present on success:

Field	Type	Notes
`data.answer`	string	Sonar's natural-language reply, grounded in the current web sources it found.
`data.sources`	`{ url, title? }[]`	URL citations Sonar used to ground the answer. Order matches Sonar's emitted order.

Notes

All endpoints use GET method with query parameters
Authentication via x-api-key header
Responses follow the unified SocialCrawl envelope (success, data, credits_used, credits_remaining, request_id, cached)
Refunded automatically on upstream failure (502 UPSTREAM_ERROR) — you are never out-of-pocket on a transient blip
Computed-fields enrichment (engagement_rate, language, etc.) does not apply — this endpoint returns research output, not social content

Perplexity

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