How to Install Perplexity MCP in Cursor
AI-powered search with citations — real-time web answers grounded in up-to-date sources
What Perplexity MCP does
Perplexity MCP brings the power of Perplexity's AI search engine directly into your AI agent. Get real-time, citation-backed answers from the web without the noise of raw search results. Features: - Search with real-time web grounding - Academic mode for research papers and scholarly sources - Pro search for deeper, multi-step reasoning - Source citations with direct URLs - Follow-up question support - Image search capabilities - News-focused search with recency filtering - Related questions and topic expansion Why Perplexity over Brave/Tavily? Perplexity doesn't just return search results — it synthesises them into coherent answers with citations. It's the difference between a list of links and a researched answer. For complex questions requiring synthesis across multiple sources, Perplexity consistently outperforms raw search APIs. Free tier: 5 requests/day. Pro plans from $20/month for unlimited searches.
Installation steps
- 1Copy the config below
- 2Open or create .cursor/mcp.json
- 3Paste inside "mcpServers": {}
- 4Restart Cursor or reload the window
Configuration
File location: .cursor/mcp.json (project) or ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global)
{
"perplexityMcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@perplexity/mcp"
],
"env": {
"PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "pplx-..."
}
}
}Install in other clients
For maintainers
If you maintain Perplexity MCP, add this badge to your README to show it's verified on CuratedMCP:
[](https://curatedmcp.com/marketplace/perplexity-mcp)
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