Perplexity Review 2026: AI Image & Video Editing for UK Businesses

Reviewed by Mo Radwan

Contributing Editor, AI Tool Pick · UK-based

Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that provides real-time answers with citations from across the web that lets you generate, edit, and enhance visual content using natural language. If your UK business creates social media graphics, product images, or marketing videos, this tool could replace expensive design software and save hours of manual editing each week. This review covers the 2026 pricing, features, and whether it delivers for UK businesses.

What Is Perplexity?

Perplexity is an AI search engine that combines large language model reasoning with real-time web search. Unlike specialised tools that only generate images (like Midjourney) or only edit videos, Perplexity offers a full suite: real-time search with citations, file upload analysis, unlimited Pro searches, and custom AI collections - all through a simple web interface.

Founded in 2022, Perplexity has grown rapidly by filling a gap between search engines and AI chatbots. Its key innovation is showing you exactly where each piece of information came from, making it more trustworthy than black-box AI assistants for research tasks. For UK businesses, Perplexity is useful for market research, competitor analysis, and finding up-to-date information without wading through Google results. For UK businesses, the key advantage is the all-in-one approach - one subscription covers everything from product photography retouching to social media video ads.

Pricing (GBP)

*Pricing converted from USD at approximately 1.29 USD/GBP. Check perplexity.ai for current rates.

Key Features

Real-time web search with citations is Perplexity's standout feature. Unlike ChatGPT or Claude, which rely on training data that can be months out of date, Perplexity searches the live web and presents answers with numbered citations. Each citation links directly to the source, so you can verify the information. For UK business research, this means you get accurate, current information about competitors, market trends, and regulations.

File upload analysis (Pro) lets you upload PDFs, images, and text files for analysis. Perplexity reads the content and answers questions about it, with citations to specific pages and sections. This is useful for reviewing reports, contracts, and research papers without reading every page.

Pro Search gives you unlimited searches with access to GPT-4 class models, deeper reasoning, and longer context windows. The free tier limits you to 5 Pro searches every 4 hours, which is fine for occasional use but frustrating for regular research.

Collections let you organise searches and answers into folders by topic or project. You can share collections with team members, making it useful for collaborative research projects.

Pros and Cons

Is Perplexity Right for UK Small Businesses?

For UK businesses that produce regular visual content, Perplexity represents exceptional value. At approximately £13/month for the Pro plan (annual), you get capabilities that would cost hundreds per month across multiple specialised tools. E-commerce businesses will benefit most from the background removal and image generation features, while marketing teams can use the text-to-video feature for social media ads and promotional content.

Where Perplexity really shines is for solo entrepreneurs and micro-businesses that cannot justify hiring a designer. The ability to generate professional-looking product images, social media graphics, and short video clips from a text prompt is a game-changer for resource-constrained teams. The learning curve is minimal - most features can be used effectively within minutes of signing up.

For businesses that need broadcast-quality video production or advanced photo manipulation, Perplexity is a complement to professional tools rather than a replacement. But for day-to-day visual content needs, it is more than capable and dramatically more affordable than the alternatives.