Microsoft Recall vs Perplexity AI

Pricing, features, platforms and who each one suits — side by side.

Microsoft Recall

Searchable local snapshots of your screen history on Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs

Pricing unknownVisit site

Perplexity AI

AI answer engine and search APIs for people and developers

PaidVisit site

Choose Microsoft Recall if…

you work on Windows
you're in its core audience: windows 11 copilot+ pc owners, knowledge workers

Choose Perplexity AI if…

you need an API to build on
you work on Web
you're in its core audience: researchers, knowledge workers

Side by side

FeatureM

Microsoft RecallP

Perplexity AI

Pricing modelPricing unknownPaid

Starting price——

Free plan

Free trial

API

Open source

Trains AI on your contentNo—

Data retentionOldest snapshots deleted when max storage reached; user chooses how long snapshots are kept—

Meeting notes—

Screen memory—

Local data storage—

App/privacy exclusions—

PlatformsWindowsWeb, API

CategoryPersonal AssistantsAI Search

CompanyMicrosoftPerplexity

Based inUnited States—

Founded—2022

Part of——

Key features

M Microsoft Recall

Automatic screen snapshots every few seconds and on content change
Search by typed or spoken description
Text and visual matches labeled close or related
Timeline browsing and per-app result filtering
Exclude specific apps and websites
Sensitive information filtering for passwords and card numbers
Local encrypted storage protected by Windows Hello
Click to Do actions on text and images in snapshots

P Perplexity AI

Answers questions using live web search
Search API with Standard and Fast Search modes
Agent API running OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and other models
Built-in tools: web, image, people and finance search
Code sandbox sessions for agents
pplx-embed embedding models
Orchestrator API with per-token billing
Decisions API that charges for input tokens only

Plans and prices

From each vendor's site. Prices change — confirm before buying.

Microsoft Recall

Pricing unknown. Plan details aren't published.

Perplexity AI

Search API$5.00 per 1K requests (Standard); $1.00 per 1K (Fast Search)

Agent API toolsFrom $0.50 per 1K calls

Embeddings API$0.004–$0.05 per 1M tokens

Decisions API$0.01–$0.02 per 1M input tokens

Strengths and limitations

Microsoft Recall

Snapshots are stored locally and encrypted, and the page says they are not shared with Microsoft
Off by default, with app, website and sensitive-data filters
Search works by text or voice and also matches images
Admins can't secretly turn on snapshots on managed devices

Requires a Copilot+ PC with a 40 TOPS NPU and 16 GB RAM
Needs at least 50 GB of free storage to enable
Optimized for only six languages
Website filtering is limited in some Chromium browsers

Perplexity AI

Published per-request and per-token API pricing
Requests rejected with a 429 error are not billed on the Orchestrator API
Access to models from several vendors through one Agent API
Decisions API output tokens are free

Search API bills successful requests even when they return no results
Per-token model rates are on separate pages rather than in the main pricing overview