Captain vs Carbon (Perplexity) (2026)
Updated March 27, 2026
Overview
Accurate knowledge search that scales for AI agents — production-grade retrieval infrastructure.
Carbon, acquired by Perplexity in December 2024, provided pre-built data connectors for ingesting unstructured data from 25+ sources into LLM applications. Its managed API was wound down in March 2025, with its technology now integrated into Perplexity's enterprise data connectivity stack. Carbon's connectors supported Google Drive, Notion, Slack, Confluence, and other popular data sources for RAG pipelines.
Key features
Core capabilities each platform advertises.
- Scalable knowledge search
- Agent-optimized retrieval
- Production-grade infrastructure
- Accuracy-focused
- Data connectors
- Google Drive
- Notion
- Slack integration
Strengths and tradeoffs
What each tool does well, and the limitations to keep in mind.
Pros
- Best-in-class accuracy — tops Open-RAG-Benchmark with 20%+ improvement over standard RAG
- Turnkey setup with just two API calls to go from raw files to searchable knowledge base
- Multimodal by default — handles text, images, tables, scanned documents, and complex PDFs
- Broad data source integrations connecting to 1,000+ sources including S3, SharePoint, Confluence
- SOC 2 Type II certified with enterprise-ready security from day one
Cons
- Credit-based pricing varies significantly by document complexity, making budgeting unpredictable
- Early-stage 2-person team may concern enterprises needing SLA guarantees
- BYOC/on-prem deployment requires Enterprise plan with custom pricing
Pros
- Pre-built connectors for easy integration with multiple data sources
- AI-optimized data processing with automatic chunking, embedding, and cleaning
- Enterprise-grade security with SOC 2 Type II compliance and end-to-end encryption
- Streamlined RAG development with production-ready infrastructure
- Now backed by Perplexity AI with enhanced enterprise capabilities
Cons
- Company was acquired and original standalone service is winding down
- Pricing information not transparently available
- Limited documentation on migration paths after acquisition
- Uncertain future roadmap as integration with Perplexity progresses
Captain or Carbon (Perplexity) — which should you choose?
Choose Captain if you wantChoose if you want
- Agent knowledge retrieval
- Enterprise search
- Scalable RAG
- Production retrieval systems
Choose Carbon (Perplexity) if you wantChoose if you want
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