7 min read
Perplexity has stopped selling you answers and started selling you an employee. On November 4 the company launched Teammates, AI agents built to own a piece of ongoing work, check on it without being asked, and come back with results for you to approve. For a one-person business, that is a different promise from a chatbot, and it deserves a different kind of review: not “is it clever?” but “is it worth a seat at my table, at this price, with this much access?”
Here is what Teammates actually do, who should pay for them today, who should wait, and how to run a fair trial without handing an agent the keys to everything.
What a Perplexity Teammate actually is
A regular AI chat works like a vending machine: you put in a prompt, you get something out, and the machine forgets you as soon as you walk away. A Teammate works more like a part-time assistant with a job description. According to Perplexity’s launch post, Teammates plan and coordinate projects, follow up when something changes without waiting for a fresh prompt, and remember project goals, task history, shared files and your feedback across runs.
Under the hood, a Teammate directs Perplexity Computer, the company’s agent that can browse websites and use apps on your behalf. Each Teammate runs in its own separate environment, with browser sessions kept apart from your other Teammates. You can connect tools such as Gmail, Slack and GitHub, and colleagues (or just you) can hand a Teammate work from a Slack channel.
Setting one up takes five steps on the web: pick Teammates in the left menu, name it after its project, connect the tools it needs, describe what it owns and when it should act, then give it a first task.
The jobs Perplexity says a Teammate can own
Perplexity’s own examples map surprisingly well onto the solo owner’s week:
- Sales follow up: notice when a regular customer stops buying, review their history and any support problems, then draft a win back offer or flag what needs fixing first.
- Marketing upkeep: manage posts, emails, ads and SEO, and keep an eye on campaign results and competitors’ promotions.
- Customer support triage: summarize the day’s complaints, flag the cases that need a personal reply from you, and track each one until it is resolved.
- Operations and paperwork: track deadlines, checklists and vendors, and chase missing items when a deadline is 72 hours away.
- Research: dig into a market question or a product problem and report back.
The memory piece is what makes these jobs plausible. Perplexity’s example is a Teammate that learns an agency needs two weeks’ notice and then builds that into every schedule it drafts. That is exactly the kind of small, repeated detail a solo owner forgets in December.
The price, and the honest math behind it
Teammates launched for Perplexity Max subscribers only, on the web first, with iOS promised “soon.” Free and Pro users have to upgrade. TechRepublic reports Max at $200 a month, or about $167 a month if you pay $2,000 for the year. Teammates draw on the plan’s monthly Computer credits, so long or parallel jobs use more of your allowance. Perplexity has not published hard usage limits for Teammates yet, so treat any “unlimited” impression with caution.
Run the numbers the way you would for a contractor. At $200 a month, a Teammate has to save you roughly four to five hours of work you would otherwise bill or spend at $40 to $50 an hour. That is a realistic bar if it genuinely takes over one recurring chore, such as daily support triage. It is not realistic if you are going to spend those same hours checking its work line by line.
The verdict on price: Teammates are worth it today for solo owners who already lose a measurable chunk of every week to one repetitive, rules based job, and who can describe that job clearly. For everyone else, $200 a month buys an impressive demo, not a return.
Who should sign up now, and who should wait
A good fit right now
- Consultants, agencies of one and ecommerce sellers with a steady stream of email and Slack requests that follow a pattern.
- Owners who already pay for Perplexity Pro and use Computer often enough to hit its limits.
- Anyone who can write a one paragraph job description for the chore they want gone. If you cannot describe the job, an agent cannot do it.
Better to wait
- Owners whose main AI work is writing and editing. A regular chat plan does that for a tenth of the price.
- Businesses that live on a phone. With iOS still “soon,” Teammates are a desktop browser tool for now.
- Anyone handling sensitive client data (health, legal, financial) who has not yet checked what connected tools expose. Read Perplexity’s data terms first.
If you are comparing agent products, our Claude Cowork review and Notion Agents review cover the two closest alternatives. Cowork is stronger on files and documents on your own computer; Notion Agents are the better choice if your business already lives in Notion. Teammates stand out on persistence: they keep watching a job between your check ins.
Where to set the guardrails before you connect anything
An agent that acts without a fresh prompt is useful precisely because it moves on its own, and that is also the risk. Perplexity says Teammates send approval requests as they work, return finished work for review, and let you take over or redirect them mid task. Use those controls on purpose:
- Start with read and draft, not send. For the first two weeks, let the Teammate draft replies and offers but never send them. Approve each one yourself.
- Connect the narrowest account possible. Use a support or shared inbox instead of your personal Gmail, and choose only the repositories or channels it needs.
- Watch for hidden instructions. An agent that reads incoming email can be targeted by text written to trick it. Our guide to prompt injection explains how this works and why “draft only” matters.
- Keep money out of reach. Do not give a Teammate saved payment details or anything that can spend. The same logic we laid out for agents that pay suppliers applies here: keep a human approval step.
- Write down what “done” means. “Summarize complaints by 9 a.m. and flag anything mentioning a refund” is a job. “Help with support” is a wish.
A two week trial that tells you whether to keep paying
If you decide to try Max, treat the first month as a paid trial with a scorecard, not a commitment.
- Days 1 to 2: pick one recurring job you can measure, such as daily support triage or weekly competitor price checks. Time yourself doing it manually once.
- Days 3 to 10: let the Teammate do the job in draft mode. Log how long your review takes and how many drafts you had to rewrite.
- Days 11 to 14: give it a second job only if the first one passes. Passing means your review time is under a third of your original manual time and you rewrote fewer than one draft in five.
- Before renewal: add up the hours saved, multiply by your hourly rate, and compare with $200. Cancel without guilt if the number is smaller.
The bottom line: Perplexity Teammates are the clearest attempt yet to sell solo owners an always on assistant rather than a smarter search box. The product is early, the price is high and the mobile app is missing, but the design choices (separate environments, approval requests, memory of your feedback) are the right ones. Pay for it when you have one specific job to hand over. Skip it when you are just curious.
Which recurring job in your business would you hand to an agent first, and which one would you never let it touch? Tell us in the comments.
