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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- You have four ways to get a free Perplexity Pro subscription.
- A free year is available if you’re a PayPal or Venmo user.
- Government workers also get a free year.
If you’ve been interested in upgrading your AI experience with one of the available paid subscriptions, pay attention because here’s your chance to score a free year of Perplexity Pro.
Perplexity is a free AI chatbot and internet search tool that operates like other AI chatbots. ZDNET’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols called it his favorite chatbot, beating out ChatGPT and Copilot.
Also: Perplexity launches an AI-powered shopping assistant – and it even gets you free shipping
Perplexity Pro gives you several upgrades over a free account. These include increased usage of Pro Search, which breaks down queries with multi-step reasoning and programming; the option to choose which AI model you want to use; file analysis, which lets you upload documents for summaries or insights; multimodal capabilities, where you can capture a picture or screenshot and asking questions about it; and image generation from Access Playground v3, OpenAI DALL-E 3, Flux, and Stable Diffusion XL.
The service usually costs $20 a month or $200 a year, but there are currently several ways to get a free subscription. Here’s what you need to know.
1. Free Perplexity Pro for Xfinity customers
Xfinity has a customer rewards program that’s free to join. The rewards range from movie ticket discounts to savings on theme parks and sporting events. In 2024, Perplexity announced a partnership with Xfinity to offer a free one-year Perplexity Pro subscription to Xfinity customers.
Also: I put the free version of Perplexity.ai through my coding tests – here’s what happened
Here’s how to claim your free Perplexity Pro subscription:
2. Free Perplexity Pro for government workers
If you’re a government employee with a .gov email address, you can get a free one-year subscription. Set up your free Perplexity account with your .gov email, and you’ll see a banner appear on your Perplexity homepage prompting you to redeem a free year of Perplexity Pro.
3. Get free Perplexity with your PayPal or Venmo account
Are you a PayPal or Venmo user? You can get a full year of Pro completely free when you connect your PayPal account and choose a valid billing method. Head to this link to get started. There are some caveats with this one.
Also: Perplexity AI’s new tool makes researching the stock market ‘delightful’. Here’s how
This offer is only for new subscribers, so if you’ve had a paid subscription in the past, you won’t be able to claim it. Second, you only have until Dec. 31 to claim. Third, you only get immediate access if your PayPal or Venmo account was created before Sept. 1. If you created it after, you’ll wait 30 days.
4. Free Perplexity Pro with a Samsung TV
If you have a Samsung TV from 2023 to 2025, you probably have the new Perplexity TV app. If you haven’t used that app yet, you probably should, as the first time you use it, you’re given the opportunity to claim a free year of Perplexity Pro.
