Perplexity launches Teammates: AI agents that work around the clock for $200

Until recently, an AI assistant was a conversational partner: you asked a question, and it answered. Then came agents that completed a one-off assignment and disappeared. Now the market is taking the next step: an agent that never switches off and independently keeps work projects moving. That is exactly what Perplexity has introduced with its new Teammates product.

What exactly was launched

Teammates are agents that work around the clock. Perplexity already offers Computer, which handles one-off assignments: ask, receive the result, and finish. Teammates work differently. They remain active and independently move ongoing projects forward.

Each Teammate gets its own virtual machine with a desktop and browser. This is an important detail: the agent does not merely call APIs but works like a person at a computer, opening websites, clicking, and filling out forms. Users can track progress in dedicated threads in the Perplexity app and communicate with the agent conveniently through Slack, within their familiar workplace chat.

Consider a typical task: every week, someone needs to collect competitors' pricing data, update a spreadsheet, and send the team a summary. Previously, you had to launch an agent manually every time. Now a Teammate can retain this process as an ongoing responsibility and message you in Slack whenever something changes or a decision is required.

Who else is in the race, and how much does it cost?

Perplexity is not alone. According to The Decoder, similar agents are already available from SpaceX (Grok Bots), Meta (Muse), OpenAI (Dots), and Anthropic (Duet). Prices vary considerably: Teammates are available only with the $200-per-month Max plan, Dots starts at $100, and Duet starts at $20.

But a low entry price does not mean low operating costs. A continuously active agent consumes substantial computing resources, and inexpensive plans are likely to run into limits quickly. A recent example: several days ago, SpaceX had to impose stricter limits on Grok Bots precisely because the agents were consuming so many resources.

For Perplexity, this is also a strategic move. According to the publication, the company had surpassed $750 million in annual revenue by August. Moving from a search engine to a platform for “digital employees” allows it to sell expensive subscriptions and keep users within its ecosystem.

Limitations and practical next steps

For now, this is only a brief launch announcement, and many questions remain unanswered. It is unclear how Teammates perform on long-running tasks, how reliably they recover from errors, or what their actual limits are under the Max plan. An agent with access to a browser and desktop also raises security questions, including which accounts and data it can safely be trusted with.

The practical takeaways are:

• Developers should examine the “agent on a dedicated virtual machine” model as an architectural pattern: isolation simplifies permission management and rollback.
• Product teams should identify which recurring team processes could be delegated to a persistent agent and begin with low-risk work, such as monitoring and reporting.
• Founders should calculate the economics in advance: the cost of a round-the-clock agent depends on usage limits, and a $20 subscription may not cover a real-world workload.

The main shift is not a particular product but the format itself. Competition is moving from “whose chat is smarter” to “whose agent can manage work more reliably without supervision.” These tools are best tested on small tasks while measuring how much time they actually save and how much they cost.