We tested one API from Perplexity with three different context sizes. The search context size setting controls how much extracted content each search result carries. All three variants have the same search price of $5.00 per 1k queries, so richer context does not cost more per search.

Quality plateaus between medium and high, while searches per task (15.4 / 12.5 / 11.4) and total cost per task (~$0.105 / ~$0.091 / ~$0.091) fall with higher search context sizes. Time per task is longer with low context, driven by additional searches and model inference time.