Perplexity’s India experiment shows free AI subscriptions boosted revenue even after downloads fell

Perplexity partnered with Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator, to offer a free 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription—normally worth about $200—to Airtel’s 360 million customers. New redemptions ended on January 16, 2026, but subscribers retained access for a year from activation, meaning the earliest users began reaching the end of their free period in July 2026.

During the seven-month offer period, Perplexity recorded 56 million downloads in India, more than nine times the preceding seven-month period, according to Sensor Tower. Monthly active users more than doubled to 8.9 million in July 2025 and peaked at 22 million in October 2025.

After the offer closed, downloads fell sharply to 3.3 million between February and July 2026, a drop of more than 90% from the preceding six months. Despite this decline, monthly active users stood at nearly 14 million in July 2026, down 37% from the October peak but still more than five times the average of about 2.6 million in the first half of 2025.

Sensor Tower estimates that Perplexity’s in-app purchase and subscription revenue in India between February and mid-August 2026 rose about 60% compared with the period when the Airtel offer was available to new users. From July 18 to August 12, average daily in-app purchase revenue was 9% higher than the preceding 30 days and 27% above the first-half 2026 average.

The revenue increase suggests some users converted to paid subscriptions after experiencing the premium service for free, though Sensor Tower noted it cannot confirm whether former Airtel subscribers were responsible. Auto-renewal settings mean some users may have been charged without actively choosing to pay.

Appfigures separately found that Perplexity’s download surge was specific to the Airtel offer and not part of a broader AI app boom. In the week before the offer launched, Perplexity averaged about 11,200 downloads per day in India; during the first week of the offer, daily downloads jumped twentyfold to nearly 223,000, later averaging about 305,000 per day between mid-September and mid-October 2025.

Appfigures also estimated Perplexity’s monthly net mobile revenue in India grew from about $34,000 in January 2025 to $70,000 in December 2025 and reached $156,000 in July 2026. The company generated an estimated $878,000 in India in the first seven months of 2026, up 16% from all of 2025.