Asha vs Perplexity: which AI is right for medical questions?
Perplexity is one of the best general-purpose AI search engines on the market, with excellent inline citations and a beautiful UX. Asha is medical-domain native, grounded in primary clinical sources rather than web summaries, with sacred refusals and a physician-founder team. For broad search, Perplexity. For medical questions, Asha is the tool built for the job.
TL;DR
Perplexity Pro is $20/month (or $200/year) and remains one of the strongest values in consumer AI. Citation accuracy averages above 90% per user reports, with access to GPT-5.4, Claude 4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro, file uploads, and 20 Deep Research queries per day. Perplexity Health launched as a Pro/Max feature in the US, aggregating EHR data (via b.well), wearables (Terra API), and labs, with citations to premium medical literature. Perplexity explicitly disclaims being a HIPAA-covered entity or diagnostic service. Asha is medical-domain native: every answer cites primary medical sources (PubMed, OpenAlex, PMC, StatPearls, DailyMed, FDA, clinical guidelines), prescription and dosing requests are refused architecturally, and a four-agent healthcare fleet handles research (Lyra), practice management (Arohi), and nutrition (Sage) alongside Asha.
Side-by-side comparison
| Feature | Asha|AI | Perplexity Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Medical questions specifically | General-purpose AI search (any topic) |
| Evidence corpus | PubMed, OpenAlex, PMC, StatPearls, DailyMed, FDA, clinical guidelines (~126M vectors) | Live web search + premium medical literature in Perplexity Health |
| Primary medical sources | DailyMed, FDA labels, StatPearls, clinical guidelines (not web summaries of them) | Indirect via web search; Perplexity Health adds premium med-lit access |
| Citation discipline | Citations to primary medical sources on every medical answer | Inline citations on every answer (citation accuracy ~90%+ per user reports) |
| Sacred medical refusals | Architecturally enforced (prescription, dosing, diagnosis) | Editorial guidance + "seek care" prompts; not architectural refusal |
| HIPAA-covered entity | Not a covered entity, but PHI anonymization + BAA-covered backbone | Explicitly disclaims being a HIPAA-covered entity |
| Built by | Two board-certified physicians | Aravind Srinivas (CEO, AI/search team) |
| Fleet breadth | Asha, Arohi, Lyra, Sage (4 healthcare agents) | Single product with vertical extensions (Health, Finance, Travel) |
| Personal health data integration | PHI handling on user-side; Asha does not aggregate wearables | Perplexity Health aggregates EHR via b.well, wearables via Terra API |
| Multimodal input | Voice, document upload, image upload | File upload (50MB), voice mode, image, video generation |
| API access for developers | A2A protocol, self-serve signup | Sonar API, Search API, Agentic Research API |
| Pricing (free) | 100 queries/month | Free tier with daily limits |
| Pricing (paid) | Asha Pro: $14.99/mo or $9.99/mo (billed annually); 30-day free trial | $20/month Pro, $200/month Max |
When to choose Perplexity
Perplexity Pro is one of the best $20/month subscriptions in consumer AI. Choose Perplexity when:
- You want a single tool for general research across every domain (medicine, law, finance, news, science).
- You value the inline-citation UX and the ability to verify claims against the cited URL in one click.
- Deep Research (200+ web searches per query, structured reports) is a core part of your workflow.
- You want Perplexity Health's wearable + EHR + labs aggregation and you accept that Perplexity Health is not a HIPAA-covered entity per their own disclosures.
- You already pay for Pro and prefer to centralize tool use.
When to choose Asha
Asha is the right tool when medical accuracy is the top priority. Choose Asha when:
- You want answers grounded in primary medical sources (DailyMed, FDA labels, StatPearls, clinical guidelines) rather than web summaries of those sources.
- You want sacred refusals on prescription and dosing questions enforced architecturally.
- You want a tool built by board-certified physicians with the editorial responsibility that implies.
- You want a healthcare fleet (research, practice, nutrition) under one architecture rather than a single-product extension into health.
- $9.99/month for unlimited beats $20/month, and the medical-domain corpus matters more to you than Perplexity's breadth.
Specific use cases
Checking a drug-drug interaction
Perplexity: Will search the web, often surfacing reputable summaries from Drugs.com or similar.
Asha: Pulls directly from DailyMed and FDA label data. Primary source rather than secondary summary, with severity and citation.
Researching a niche diagnosis
Perplexity: Strong on breadth; Deep Research runs structured iterative searches.
Asha: Strong on medical depth; pulls from 48M+ biomedical abstracts plus StatPearls clinical content. Sacred refusals on diagnostic claims.
Personal health dashboard with wearables
Perplexity Health: Built for this. Aggregates Apple Health, Fitbit, ŌURA, lab results, and EHRs via b.well.
Asha: Does not currently aggregate wearable or EHR data. Asha focuses on the medical-question side of the workflow.
General-purpose research outside healthcare
Perplexity: Best in class. This is the core product.
Asha: Out of scope. Asha is medical-domain by design.
Pricing breakdown
Perplexity Pro is $20/month or $200/year ($16.67/month effective). Perplexity Max is $200/month for power users. Perplexity Health requires a Pro or Max subscription and is available to US users. The Sonar API has tiered pricing depending on model and search context size. Asha is free for 100 queries/month, and Asha Pro is $14.99/month or $9.99/month billed annually ($119.88/year) with a 30-day free trial (no card required to start). Asha's A2A API is $49 Developer, $199 Pro, $999 Enterprise. For a single user focused on medical questions, Asha is roughly half the price of Perplexity Pro.
Frequently asked questions
Is Perplexity safe to use for medical questions?
Perplexity's citation discipline is strong, and the team has built thoughtful guardrails in Perplexity Health. For casual or research-oriented medical questions where you plan to verify with a clinician, Perplexity is reasonable. For higher-stakes questions (medications, dosing, diagnosis), an architecturally refusing tool with primary-source citations is the safer fit.
Is Perplexity Health HIPAA-compliant?
Per Perplexity's own disclosures, Perplexity Health is not a HIPAA-covered entity and is not a diagnostic service. The company commits to encrypting health data, not selling it, and not using it to train models. Read Perplexity's blog post "Introducing Perplexity Health" for the full disclosure.
Does Asha integrate with wearables like Perplexity Health does?
Not currently. Asha's focus is the medical-question side: citation-grounded answers, sacred refusals, audit trail. Wearable/EHR aggregation is on the long-term roadmap but is not the differentiator today.
Which tool has better citations on medical questions?
Different shapes. Perplexity cites web URLs (often news, journal summaries, established health publishers). Asha cites primary medical sources (PubMed records, FDA labels, clinical guidelines). For medical-question accuracy, primary sources win. For breadth of perspectives, web citation can be useful.
Can I use both?
Many users do. Perplexity for general research and broad web search; Asha for medical-specific questions where citation depth and refusal posture matter. They are complementary, not substitutes.