Perplexity Renames Gateway API to "Router API," Gates It to Private Preview
Perplexity's developer docs renamed the Gateway API to Router API and added a private-preview banner requiring an email request for access, ending its self-serve availability. All 5 model prices are unchanged.
Gateway API — publicly self-serve, no access request required (launched 2026-08-11, expanded to 5 models 2026-08-14)
Router API — same URL and model catalog, but gated behind "private preview. Email [email protected] to request access." (confirmed 2026-08-25)
Perplexity’s developer docs quietly renamed the week-old Gateway API — its line of Perplexity-hosted, Perplexity-priced open-weight models (DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM, and two NVIDIA Nemotron additions) — to “Router API” across the docs sidebar, page titles, and code samples. The page now opens with a banner: “Router API is in private preview. Email [email protected] to request access.”
The URL (docs.perplexity.ai/docs/gateway/models) and every listed price are unchanged from the 2026-08-14 catalog. What changed is access: a product that launched as an ordinary self-serve API surface on 2026-08-11 is, two weeks later, no longer reachable with an API key alone. This is the first Perplexity developer product to move from GA to a gated preview rather than the reverse, and it reads as a deliberate pull-back rather than a rollout mistake — the rename accompanies the gating, not just a URL slug change.
Separately, perplexity.ai/enterprise/pricing — which had come back online on 2026-08-14 after roughly a month behind a Cloudflare challenge — reverted to being Cloudflare-blocked again by 2026-08-25. That is a capture-access regression, not a confirmed price change; Enterprise Pro ($34/seat/mo) and Enterprise Max ($271/seat/mo), both billed annually, are carried forward from the 2026-08-14 check.
Perplexity's developer docs renamed the Gateway API to "Router API" throughout the sidebar, page titles, and code samples, and added a banner reading "Router API is in private preview. Email [email protected] to request access." The URL (docs.perplexity.ai/docs/gateway/models) and all 5 model prices (deepseek-v4-flash-0731, kimi-k3, glm-5.2, nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b, nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b) are unchanged from the 2026-08-14 catalog, but the product is no longer self-serve — access now requires an email request rather than an API key alone. Confirmed both via Playwright capture and a direct curl of the page's server-rendered source. Separately, perplexity.ai/enterprise/pricing, reachable on 2026-08-14, reverted to a Cloudflare challenge by 2026-08-25 — a capture-access regression on the Enterprise price page, not a confirmed price change.