Perplexity
Web-grounded research via Perplexity Sonar. Natural-language questions, real source citations
Ask a natural-language question and get a synthesised answer plus the URLs Sonar cited as evidence. 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 a structured social-media call cannot give you.
Base URL: /v1/perplexity/...
Quickstart
1. Run a research query
curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/perplexity/research?query=what+is+the+capital+of+france" \
-H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"2. Read the answer and its 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
}Ask a question
| Endpoint | Credits | What it returns | Key parameters |
|---|---|---|---|
GET /v1/perplexity/research | 1 | One synthesised answer plus the URL citations Sonar used to ground it | query |
Both response 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. |
data.sources is always an array. Empty arrays are legal: Sonar may answer one-line factual questions without citing.
Which grounded-research endpoint to use
Four endpoints answer questions off the open web. They differ in what you get back rather than in what they can reach.
| Endpoint | Credits | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|
GET /v1/perplexity/research | 1 | You want a question in words and an answer in words. The cheapest of the four. |
GET /v1/tavily/search | 1 | You want the sources themselves, filterable by domain, date and topic, with an optional written answer. |
GET /v1/web/search | 2 per 10 results | You want web, news and image results in the unified WebPageList shape, optionally scraped inline. |
GET /v1/prism/answers | 15 | One answer is not enough to act on. Sends the same question to Perplexity, Grok and Tavily, keeps each answer verbatim, merges citations, and adds a matrix of where they agree and disagree. |
All endpoints
1 endpoint available.
| Endpoint | Path | Credit Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Web research via Perplexity Sonar | /v1/perplexity/research | standard (1cr) |
Platform notes
- Refunded automatically on upstream failure (502
UPSTREAM_ERROR). You are never out of pocket on a transient blip. - Computed-fields enrichment does not apply. This endpoint returns research output, not social content, so
engagement_rate,languageand the rest are not attached. - Authentication is your SocialCrawl
x-api-key. You do not need a Perplexity account. - Responses follow the unified SocialCrawl envelope (
success,data,credits_used,credits_remaining,request_id,cached).