Perplexity adds Ultrafast modes, Decisions API and connector controls

On October 19, Perplexity added Ultrafast Computer modes, a Decisions API and role-based connector controls. The bundle gives developers a probability-based API for software decisions and gives enterprise administrators more control over connected data. The faster Computer setting, however, is limited to Max subscribers on the web.

Ultrafast is available for GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol through Computer’s Custom → Speed menu. Perplexity says the setting prioritizes response speed but uses more credits than Normal or Fast. The changelog does not quantify the additional credit use or announce availability on other plans.

The Decisions API takes text, JSON or images as a state and returns probabilities instead of a written response. Applications can pose yes-or-no questions, choose among developer-defined options or score content against an ordered rubric. Each request can include up to 128 questions, with up to 255 options for a choice and 10 levels for a score.

Perplexity offers a 27-billion-parameter pplx-decider-v1.2 model at $0.02 per million input tokens and a 4-billion-parameter Flash version at $0.01 per million input tokens, with no charge for output tokens. The company recommends one question per Flash request because it says joint questions reduced accuracy on the smaller model. When a request contains several questions, Flash processes them separately and bills the shared state once for each question.

Perplexity claims version 1.2 improves text and vision accuracy and can deliver up to five times faster inference. Perplexity’s model card reports that the 27B model’s overall Decision Index 0.3 score rose from 62.30 for version 1.1 to 68.09 for version 1.2 with joint requests, while its Vision Decision Index score increased from 73.22 to 77.43. Those are company-reported results, and the supplied research did not independently reproduce the up-to-five-times comparison.

For enterprise customers, role-based connector access is available only on sales-assisted Enterprise plans. Administrators can grant an enabled connector to all members, admins or selected custom roles, and a user must hold at least one role on the connector’s access list. Perplexity says it enforces those grants server-side across agent sessions, its command-line interface, scheduled tasks and connector use scoped to Projects or Brains.

Existing connector access is preserved when an organization is migrated: disabled connectors remain disabled with no assigned roles, while enabled connectors remain enabled with All Members as their only role until an administrator narrows access. Administrators can also set new connectors to arrive enabled for everyone, enabled for admins or disabled. Perplexity records enable, disable and role changes in organization audit logs.