LLM API Providers · reliability comparison
OpenAI API vs Perplexity API: which is more reliable? (2026)
Perplexity API is more reliable than OpenAI API, scoring 93.8 vs 49.0 out of 100. Over the last 90 days OpenAI API reported 35 incidents and Perplexity API reported 3, with effective uptime of 98.72% and 99.94% respectively. Perplexity API resolves incidents faster on average (36m).
Data updated Nov 1, 2026 · How we score
VS
| Metric | OpenAI API | Perplexity API |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability score | 49.0 | 93.8 |
| Rank (LLM API providers) | #9 | #1 |
| Uptime (90 days) | 98.72% | 99.94% |
| Incidents (90 days) | 35 | 3 |
| Partial / major outages | 1 | 1 |
| Avg time to resolve | 6h 8m | 36m |
| Outages we detected | 0 | 0 |
| Transparency score | 100/100 | 100/100 |
Where OpenAI API and Perplexity API differ
- OpenAI API reported 11.7× as many incidents as Perplexity API over the last 90 days (35 vs 3).
- Perplexity API fixes problems faster: 36m on average, against 6h 8m for OpenAI API (10.4× quicker).
- OpenAI API's longest outage on record lasted 40m (Sep 15, 2026); Perplexity API's lasted 4h 31m (Jun 4, 2026).
90-day uptime
OpenAI API
Perplexity API
- No incidents
- Degraded
- Partial outage
- Major outage
- No data
Recent OpenAI API incidents
- Degraded performanceOct 30, 2026 · resolved in 4h 1m
Elevated errors for GPT Image 2 API image edits
Affected: Images
- Degraded performanceOct 27, 2026 · resolved in 1h 18m
6.1 Sol Degraded Model Performance
Affected: Batch, Chat Completions, Responses
- InformationalOct 27, 2026 · resolved in 29m
- InformationalOct 23, 2026 · resolved in 33m
- InformationalOct 23, 2026 · resolved in 2h 17m
- Degraded performanceOct 22, 2026 · resolved in 6h 32m
Elevated ChatGPT conversation and Responses API errors
Affected: Responses, Conversations
Recent Perplexity API incidents
- Degraded performanceOct 9, 2026 · resolved in 37m
Elevated API errors and timeouts
Affected: Computer, API, Website, App
- Major outageAug 13, 2026 · resolved in 1h 4m
Affected: App
- Degraded performanceAug 11, 2026 · resolved in 6m
Other LLM API providers to consider
- Cohere · #2 · 99.94% uptime
- Groq · #3 · 99.94% uptime
- Cerebras Inference · #4 · 99.88% uptime
- xAI API · #5 · 99.76% uptime