Lance Whitney / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
Designing a detailed web app, dashboard, or even spreadsheet might take you hours to complete. What if someone or something could do the same work in just a few minutes? That’s the idea behind the new Labs tool from Perplexity AI.
In a blog post published Thursday, Perplexity explained how Labs can create anything from reports to spreadsheets to dashboards to simple web apps. The new feature is accessible only to Pro subscribers, who pay $20 per month (though there are a couple of ways to score the plan for free).
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This new capability is available on Perplexity’s website and in its iOS and Android apps. The company has also promised its imminent arrival in its Windows and Mac apps.
Perplexity Labs is content creation to the nth degree. The tool can help you design and complete a host of projects, both personally and professionally. Whether you’re cooking up a meal plan, analyzing your financial situation, or developing a marketing campaign, you can use Labs to flesh out your idea from start to finish.
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That all sounds helpful. But what’s really cool is the way Perplexity Labs can build interactive content for you.
To kick things off, simply choose the Labs icon at the prompt and submit your request. Labs then goes into action, consulting the necessary web sources, compiling the data, and finally creating your project. It will even tell you how many minutes it will take to complete the job, typically at least 10 minutes, but sometimes longer, depending on the project.
What can Perplexity Labs generate?
1. Computer code
Tell Labs the purpose of your code or program, and it will write it for you. The tool can tackle specific tasks such as structuring data, applying formulas, and creating charts. It will then execute the code to see how it works. From there, you’re able to modify your request or description, and Labs will update the code for you.
2. Reports
Give Labs the topic of the report you want created, and it will gather and compile the required information. In response, it builds a dynamic report with text, charts, graphs, and images. Any files it creates during the process are placed in an Assets section, so you can view and download them all.
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To try this out, I told Labs to create a report that correlates each arrival of Halley’s Comet with significant events that occurred on Earth. After several minutes of data gathering and asset creation, the tool served up a detailed report with links, charts, and images (including one amazing image of a tapestry from 1066 showing the arrival of the comet). The report itself was well documented and organized, breaking down the information into different sections.
3. Spreadsheets
Here, Labs can design anything from a simple table to a complex, interactive spreadsheet. Again, just give it the subject or goal of the spreadsheet. The tool finds the necessary information and builds what you need.
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To try this out, I asked Labs to design an interactive spreadsheet for a Sudoku puzzle. In response, it took to the web to gather the rules and regulations for Sudoku and then designed a spreadsheet that I could access online or download to my PC.
4. Dashboards
A dashboard is supposed to provide visual information in a clear and appealing way. For this one, I asked Labs to create an interactive dashboard showing me the performance of the NASDAQ from 1971 through 2025. After several minutes of research and content creation, the tool presented me with the type of dashboard I wanted.
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Beyond showing me the rise of the NASDAQ from its inception to the present, it set up drop-down menus that I could use to narrow or change the scope. One menu let me change the time period from all years to just the modern era (1990–2025), the 21st century (2000–2025), or the last 15 years (2010–2025). Another allowed me to switch between a linear and logarithmic scale.
5. Mini apps
Need to develop a quick but useful program? Labs can help you by designing a mini app. For this one, I asked it to create a web app that shows the current time zone for all the regions of the world with a drop-down menu for selecting a specific region. Labs built an app that displays the time zones for several major cities around the world. By clicking a drop-down menu and selecting a specific city, I was able to add its time zone to the results.
Depending on the project and content generated, you can usually download it, share it with someone else, export it in a specific format, or publish it.
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Overall, I was impressed with the results. There were some glitches here and there. One of the drop-down menus in the NASDAQ dashboard failed to work. And the Sudoku game kept throwing up a dialog box that refused to disappear. But I’m sure those could have been fixed with some fine-tuning.
“Labs can craft everything from reports and spreadsheets to dashboards and simple web apps — all backed by extensive research and analysis,” Perplexity said in its post. “Often performing 10 minutes or more of self-supervised work, Perplexity Labs use a suite of tools like deep web browsing, code execution, and chart and image creation to turn your ideas and to-dos into work that’s been done. Labs can accomplish in 10 minutes what would previously have taken days of work, tedious research, and coordination of many different skills.”
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