Perplexity launches Teammates, always-on AI agents for work

Perplexity launched Teammates on 5 November 2026. These are always-on AI agents for work that can take on multiple roles inside a workspace, and they draw on the projects, skills and memory a user already keeps in Perplexity’s tools. The key detail for anyone weighing them up is the price: Teammates is available only with Perplexity’s Max plan, which costs $200 a month.

The launch puts Perplexity directly against OpenAI and Anthropic in work agents. The Verge describes Teammates as Perplexity’s answer to OpenAI’s Dots and Claude Duet, which also run agents on parallel jobs around the clock.

What Perplexity launched with Teammates

Perplexity’s own launch post describes the product in a few lines:

Teammates work for you. They take on jobs, and work proactively using your Computer tasks, skills, memory, and tools. Teammates collaborate with other teammates and can message coworkers in Slack. Available now for Max subscribers on the web.

That text comes from Perplexity’s announcement on X. According to The Verge, users can assign each Teammate a different job, and the agents can work on those jobs at the same time. Each Teammate gets its own thread, so progress can be tracked one agent at a time in the Perplexity app, and users can also interact with the agents in Slack.

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas framed the long-term goal on X: “Over time, we envision every org having hundreds of teammates working for each person”.

Item	What the sources say
Launch date	5 November 2026
Operating mode	Always on, running 24/7
Parallel work	Each Teammate can be given a different job and they work simultaneously
Context it uses	Existing projects, skills and memory from Perplexity tools; Computer tasks and tools
Where it works	Web for Max subscribers; individual threads in the Perplexity app; Slack
Required plan	Max, $200 per month
Foundation	Integrates with and builds on Perplexity Computer

What Teammates adds over Perplexity Computer

Teammates sits on top of Perplexity Computer, which The Verge describes as an AI system that can deploy agents on a user’s device to complete tasks. Perplexity says Teammates “build on top” of Computer by adding the ability to collaborate and to complete “ongoing, large-scale work”.

Computer itself is recent. It first launched in February as a Mac-only feature that let users hand off tasks such as web research, data entry and application control to AI agents. At launch, one software architect summarised it as a “digital worker” that orchestrates multiple AI models rather than relying on one, runs longer projects autonomously, and combines files, tools, memory and agents into one workspace. Perplexity brought Computer to Android in March.

The clearest account of the difference between the two products comes from a commentator rather than from Perplexity. Prasenjit Sarkar, writing on X on launch day, says Computer “runs in a temporary sandbox and forgets you between sessions,” while Teammates does not. In his description, a user gives a Teammate a goal instead of a prompt. The agent then keeps Projects, Memory, Skills, connectors and past runs in context, and sits in a Slack channel watching for changes. The Verge describes Computer as deploying agents on the user’s device, not in a temporary sandbox. Perplexity has not given a detailed technical account of how persistence works, so Sarkar’s framing is best read as one observer’s interpretation.

Who can use Teammates, and where

Perplexity’s post says Teammates is “available now for Max subscribers on the web”. The Verge reports that the feature requires the $200-a-month Max plan. Sarkar also notes there is no cheaper tier with access. Beyond the web, users follow each agent’s thread in the Perplexity app and can work with Teammates in Slack.

The sources do not mention a developer API for Teammates, regional limits, or integrations beyond Slack. They also do not say which underlying models power the agents. Builders who want programmatic control should treat this, for now, as a product inside Perplexity’s own apps and Slack, not a platform they can call from their own code.

How Teammates compares with OpenAI and Anthropic

The Verge places Teammates alongside OpenAI’s Dots and Claude Duet, which also let users assign agents different jobs to run simultaneously. It describes Perplexity’s version as “much more expensive” because of the Max plan requirement.

Sarkar offers a wider comparison, which is his own account and is not confirmed by the other sources here. He says OpenAI shipped Workspace Agents on ChatGPT Business in April for $20 a user. In his account, those agents are built on Codex, connect to Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive and Atlassian, and come with a compliance API and human approval gates on write actions. He also lists Microsoft’s Copilot Studio, Anthropic’s Claude Managed Agents, Google’s Agentspace and Salesforce’s Agentforce as products built on the same idea.

On price, Sarkar argues that the $200 entry point “filters for people who’ll actually run a teammate hard enough to prove the ROI case”. That is commentary, not evidence. No source offers a side-by-side test of Teammates against any rival on task quality, reliability or cost per completed job.

What Perplexity says about its own use, and how far that goes

According to Sarkar, Srinivas posted a few hours after launch that 10,000 Teammates had been created inside Perplexity’s own workspace in the previous 30 days. Sarkar says that is 20 times the company’s headcount, with about 1,000 active on a single day. These figures appear only in Sarkar’s post, which relays them second-hand. No source here shows Srinivas’s original post, so the numbers should be read as Perplexity’s self-reported internal usage, passed on by a third party.

Sarkar also lists the kinds of work Teammates are pitched for: bug triage, QA loops, security monitoring and A/B test management. He describes one demo in which an ads Teammate noticed a campaign beating its customer-acquisition-cost target, increased the spend, and sent a contract extension to the legal team on its own. That is a demonstration chosen by the maker, not an independent result.

There is also little public evidence on Computer, the layer underneath. When Computer reached Android in March, Create With reported that Perplexity had not shared metrics on Computer adoption or usage patterns since launch.

What it means for builders, and the open questions

For teams already paying for Perplexity Max, Teammates is a way to run several long-lived agents on separate jobs. Each agent keeps its context and reports through threads and Slack. The design suits recurring, monitoring-style work, the kind Sarkar lists, more than one-off questions. For everyone else, the $200 monthly plan is the first hurdle, especially against rivals that commentators say cost less per seat.

Several questions remain open in the sources:

• Permissions and approvals. The demo described by Sarkar has an agent raising ad spend and routing a contract without a person stepping in. The sources do not say what approval controls Teammates offers before an agent takes actions such as spending money or contacting coworkers. Sarkar credits OpenAI’s product with human approval gates on write actions, and does not say whether Perplexity’s has them.
• Security model. Create With reported that Perplexity used sandboxing and content scanning for Computer on desktop. No source explains how those protections carry over to agents that run continuously and act in Slack.
• Persistent context. Teammates keep memory, skills and past runs in context. The sources do not say how that stored context is scoped, inspected or deleted.
• Reliability. No independent hands-on reports or benchmarks exist yet. Sarkar’s own test for the category is whether an agent “survives being added to a Slack channel by someone who forgets it’s there”.

Questions about how agents behave when acting on their own are not unique to Perplexity. Unicorn API recently covered a UK agency’s finding that Anthropic and OpenAI AI agents faked identities in tests, which is relevant context for any always-on agent with access to a team’s tools.

What to watch next

• Pricing changes. Whether Perplexity opens Teammates to plans below Max, given rival offerings that commentators say are priced per seat at a fraction of $200.
• More integrations. Slack is the only workplace tool named in Perplexity’s announcement. Watch for others, and for any API access.
• Controls and governance. Whether Perplexity publishes details on approval steps, audit trails and memory management for agents that act on their own.
• Independent results. Hands-on reports from Max subscribers, and whether Perplexity confirms the internal usage figures Sarkar attributes to Srinivas.
• Competitive moves. How OpenAI’s Dots and Claude Duet, the products The Verge names as the closest comparisons, respond on features and price.