Is Perplexity AI Safe? What It Collects, Stores, and Trains On in 2026

Perplexity has become a lot of people's default way to look things up. Instead of a page of blue links, you get a written answer with citations, and you can keep asking follow-ups. It's fast, it's genuinely useful, and it's replaced Google for millions of everyday searches: health questions, money decisions, legal what-ifs, the stuff you used to type into a search bar and hope nobody was watching.

Which makes "Is Perplexity safe?" a fair question. Not because Perplexity is shady, but because an answer engine sees the same private questions a search engine does, and it handles them differently. Here's what Perplexity actually collects, whether it trains on your data, and how to lock it down if you want to keep using it.

What Perplexity Collects About You

According to Perplexity's privacy notice, the data it gathers falls into a few buckets.

Your searches and conversations. Every question you ask, every follow-up, and the answers it returns. If you're signed in, these are saved to your account as threads you can revisit later.

Your account information. Name, email address, and payment details if you subscribe to Pro or Max.

Your device and usage data. IP address, browser and device details, and how you interact with the product: what you click, which features you use, and when.

Your approximate location. Derived from your IP address and used to localize results and, historically, to inform advertising.

This is roughly what any modern web service collects. The thing worth sitting with is the content. People research symptoms, debts, custody questions, and job changes through Perplexity the same way they once used a private browser tab. That search intent is now stored text tied to an account.

Does Perplexity Train on Your Data?

By default, yes.

For Free, Pro, and Max users, a setting called AI Data Retention is turned on by default, and while it's on, your searches and interactions can be used to improve and train Perplexity's AI. You can turn it off, but there are two details worth knowing.

First, opting out only affects data going forward. Anything already used to improve the models before you flipped the switch stays where it is. The toggle doesn't reach backward.

Second, you can't opt out at all unless you're logged in. If you use Perplexity signed out, there's no setting to disable, and the default applies.

Enterprise is the exception. Perplexity states that Enterprise data is not used to train its models, so business customers don't need to opt out. For everyone on a personal plan, the responsibility sits with you to change it.

How to Opt Out of Perplexity AI Training

If you want to keep using Perplexity but stop it from training on your searches, here's the setting:

Open your account settings, go to the Preferences tab, and turn off "AI Data Retention." That stops your future searches from being used to improve Perplexity's models.

What Happens to Your Search History?

When you're signed in, Perplexity saves your searches as threads in your Library so you can return to them. They stay there until you remove them. You can delete individual threads, and you can delete your account, which removes your data subject to Perplexity's standard retention and any legal obligations to keep certain records.

The practical point: your history is persistent by default. It sits in your account until you decide to clean it out, the same way a browser keeps history until you clear it. If you never look, it accumulates.

Perplexity, Ads, and the Comet Browser

Perplexity's relationship with advertising has moved around, so it's worth being precise. In 2024 it began experimenting with ads shown as clearly labeled sponsored follow-up questions. In 2025 it stepped back from that experiment, with leadership citing concerns that ads could make people question whether an answer was neutral. So as of this writing, the core answer experience is not ad-supported in the way ChatGPT's free tier has become.

The bigger privacy conversation has shifted to Comet, Perplexity's AI browser. A browser that acts on your behalf necessarily sees a great deal: the pages you visit, what's on them, and what you do there. That's the trade for an assistant that can work across the whole web for you, and it's a meaningfully larger surface than a single search box. If you try Comet, it's worth reviewing its permissions and data settings as a separate decision from the search product.

Is Perplexity Safe for Sensitive Questions?

This is where a blanket yes or no falls apart.

For everyday research (learning about a topic, comparing products, summarizing an article, getting unstuck on a project), Perplexity is safe in any practical sense. The data practices above exist, but they don't create real risk for ordinary use.

For sensitive topics, it comes down to your own comfort level:

Health questions. Describing symptoms or asking about medications means that text is stored on Perplexity's servers, tied to your account, and used to improve its models unless you opted out. A personal Perplexity plan is not designed as a HIPAA-covered service for individuals.

Legal and financial questions. The same storage applies. A question about a dispute, a tax situation, or a debt lives in your account history until you remove it.

Work and career. Researching a competitor, drafting something about your employer, or exploring a job change are all cases where a persistent, searchable history matters more than it seems in the moment.

Personal and relationship questions. Plenty of people think out loud through an answer engine. Those searches are stored, and by default they help train the product.

None of this makes Perplexity dangerous. It means that for certain questions you're trading a little privacy for convenience, and it's worth knowing you're making the trade.

How to Use Perplexity More Privately

If Perplexity is your tool of choice, a few habits reduce your exposure:

Turn off AI Data Retention. Account settings, Preferences tab. This stops future searches from training the models.

Clear your threads. Periodically delete searches you don't need from your Library so they don't accumulate indefinitely.

Don't assume logged-out is private. Signed-out searches can't be opted out of training, and your IP and device are still visible. Logged out is not the same as anonymous.

Treat Comet as its own decision. The AI browser sees far more than the search box. Review its settings separately before you let it run.

For a wider view of tools built around data minimization, see our guide to the best private AI assistants in 2026.

A More Private Alternative

If privacy is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have, some assistants are built so the private-by-default choice is made for you, not left as a setting you have to remember to find.

Ask Safely is a privacy-first AI assistant powered by Anthropic's Claude. Chats auto-delete in 8 hours by default, on a timer you set, so there's simply less sitting around than a persistent history. Your conversations are never used for AI training, everything is encrypted in transit and at rest, and there are no ads and no tracking. You decide what it remembers and can delete that anytime, and guest mode collects nothing at all. It's free on iOS, Android, and web.

Ask Safely isn't the only option, and the comparison guide is honest about where others do things well. The point isn't that one tool wins. It's that with a private-by-default assistant, forgetting is the starting position, so you're not relying on a toggle to protect the questions you'd rather not leave lying around.

The Bottom Line

Perplexity is safe for everyday use in the same way a mainstream search engine is safe. The company is legitimate, the product is good, and most people will never have a problem. But it collects and stores more than casual users assume, it trains on your searches by default, and that default only lifts when you're signed in and go find the setting.

So the real question isn't "Is Perplexity safe?" It's "Safe for what?" For looking up a recipe or a spec sheet, absolutely. For the questions you'd lower your voice to ask, it's worth deciding on purpose where those go, and whether you'd rather they weren't kept at all.