QWE AI Academy You’ll build a polished article in 8 minutes. Citations inline. Clean formatting. Readers click through to sources.
Then you try moving it to your blog. Can’t export. No PDF. No WordPress plugin. Just a Perplexity link.
That’s Pages in 2026 – fast research-to-article tool that traps your work on their platform.
What Pages Does (And the One Thing It Won’t)
Pages turns research queries into structured articles with sections, citations, images. You enter “impact of remote work on productivity,” pick an audience level (beginner or expert), and the AI drafts a multi-section report sourced from current web data. Perplexity launched it mid-2024 for educators and researchers.
As of early 2026, the “Create a Page” button was temporarily retired while they rebuild it. Current version uses “Convert to Page” from existing chat threads.
Structure: instant. Citations: automatic. Reading experience: cleaner than raw ChatGPT output.
The problem: you can’t move that article anywhere. Mid-2024 users called the export limitation “the number one complaint.” Print-to-PDF? Fails. Copy-paste? Loses formatting. API to extract your content? Doesn’t exist.
Think about what that means for 30 seconds. Every Page you make is Perplexity’s property, not yours. You get a link to share, but the link points to their servers. Company knowledge base? Client deliverable? Blog post draft? None of those work if you can’t get the content out.
Three Gotchas Every Tutorial Skips
The Export Dead End
Pages live on Perplexity’s servers. Period. Building a knowledge base for your company wiki? Drafting posts for your site? Compiling research for a client? Pages isn’t the tool.
You can share the Perplexity-hosted link. That’s it. This isn’t UX friction – it kills most professional use cases. People in 2024 wanted WordPress export, Slides integration, Markdown download. Zero of those exist. That complaint users kept filing? Still unaddressed as of Feb 2026.
Public-Only Publishing
Published Pages become searchable on Perplexity. Anyone finds them. No “unlisted” mode. No “private” option.
Competitive research? Strategy docs? Client analysis? Publish any of those and you’ve created a public artifact. Companies in 2024 learned this the hard way – their market research showed up in search for competitors the instant they shared it with their team.
The 2026 UI That Doesn’t Match Tutorials
Most 2024 tutorials show a “Create a Page” button in the Library tab. That button’s gone as of early 2026. Perplexity pulled it to enhance the feature. Current path: “Convert to Page” from an existing chat. When does standalone creation return? They haven’t said.
The feature’s being rewritten. If Pages is central to your workflow, you’re building on a foundation that’s actively changing.
How to Use Pages (When It’s Live)
Assuming the rebuilt version works like the last one, here’s the workflow:
1. Research thread: Open Perplexity, run queries on your topic. Ask follow-ups. AI pulls sources, builds context across responses.
2. Convert: Library tab (left sidebar) → find your thread → “Convert to Page.” Perplexity restructures it into sections with headers, paragraphs, citations.
3. Edit: Rearrange sections, delete parts, add new ones by typing prompts into the editor. Request tone shifts (beginner vs expert). Ask it to expand specific sections. (This part actually works well – editing feels more like directing than writing.)
4. Visuals: Pages include web-sourced images or AI-generated ones. Upload your own if the current version supports it.
5. Publish: Hit the button. You get a shareable link. That’s your only distribution method – no embed code, no RSS, no export.
Workaround: Draft the Page, then immediately copy raw text + citations into a Google Doc or Notion. You lose formatting and images, but you have the content in a system you control. Treat Pages as a drafting tool. Not a publishing platform.
Pricing: What You Pay For
Pages doesn’t cost extra – it’s included in Perplexity’s tiers. Official pricing as of early 2026:
| Plan | Cost | Pages Access | Limitations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Yes (when available) | ~5 Pro Searches per 4 hours, basic models only |
| Pro | $20/month | Yes | Unlimited Pro Searches, advanced models, file uploads |
| Max | $200/month | Yes | Unlimited everything, early feature access |
Free tier works for simple explainers or study guides. Pro tier matters when you need deeper research – Pages from complex threads burn through Pro Search capacity fast. One detailed Page with 8-10 follow-up queries? You’ve used most of your free quota.
Max tier: overkill unless you’re using Labs features (dashboards, apps) or hitting Pro volume limits daily. Most users won’t need it for Pages.
When to Use Pages (And When to Run)
Good for:
- Shareable explainers for students/team members who consume via link
- Draft research summaries you’ll manually move elsewhere
- Testing content structure before writing the final version
Bad for:
- Publishing to your blog or CMS
- Internal docs that must stay private
- Knowledge bases you want to own long-term
Pages vs Alternatives
Perplexity Pages: Fastest query-to-article path. Citations beat ChatGPT’s web search. UI: cleanest.
ChatGPT (web search mode): Citations slower and less reliable. But you get raw text output you can paste anywhere. Zero lock-in.
Claude Projects: Better for iterative editing. Context persists across sessions. You control output format completely. No built-in publishing – which is actually an advantage. You decide where it goes.
Notion AI: Weaker research, but output lives in your Notion workspace. Link it to projects, databases, team docs. Actual integration instead of a stranded link.
Every alternative sacrifices some of Perplexity’s speed and citation quality. In exchange? You own the output. Pages trades ownership for convenience.
What Changed in 2026 (And What’s Coming)
The feature retirement in early 2026 means Perplexity knows the current version has problems. User complaints about exports were loud. They pulled the feature to rebuild.
What we don’t know: whether the redesign addresses exports or just improves editing. If they add PDF export, Markdown download, or an API for extracting content, Pages becomes useful for professional work. Until then? It’s a prototype. Use it to validate ideas and draft structures. Don’t build critical workflows on it.
One more thing: if the rebuilt version takes another 6 months, the tutorials you’re reading now will be even more outdated. The current “Convert to Page” flow might not exist by mid-2026. That’s the risk of building on a feature that’s actively being rewritten.
Can I use Pages for commercial content?
No license restriction. But the lack of export plus public-only publishing makes it impractical. You’d generate content in Pages, manually copy to your CMS, reformat everything. At that point you’re using an expensive drafting tool.
Do I need Pro to create Pages?
Not required. Free tier’s ~5 Pro Searches per 4 hours means you’ll hit the limit fast if you’re making Pages from complex threads. I tried creating a Page on “pros and cons of remote work” with 6 follow-up questions – used all 5 searches in one session. If you’re making 2+ Pages per day, the $20/month Pro plan removes that bottleneck.
What happens to published Pages if I cancel?
Perplexity hasn’t published a data retention policy for this. Based on how similar platforms work, published Pages probably stay live after cancellation – they’re public on Perplexity’s platform, not tied to an active subscription. But there’s no official guarantee. One user on Reddit reported their Pages stayed up 3 months after canceling Pro, but that’s anecdotal. If you care about preserving content, copy it elsewhere before you cancel. Better safe than discovering your research disappeared when you need it 6 months later.