As we all know many students are juggling research, writing assignments, and cramming for exams left and right. So, the question is: between Jenni AI and Perplexity AI, which one is the best for a student?
The short answer is that combining them is your best bet. The longer answer is the devil lies in the details. Keep reading to know more about it.
Why Perplexity AI is so good for research?
Perplexity AI is basically an “answer engine” that does real-time searches on the web and shows you results with citations and links. You can verify all those links by yourself. However, Perplexity AI is not at all made to do advanced inline citations directly in your essay. It focuses on searching and summarizing content so you can gather the facts quickly.
A few reasons why you might like Perplexity AI:
- It can search current news, policy documents, new tech articles – anything that’s up on the web.
- You can pick Pro Search which looks into multiple sources deeper. Deep Research goes even further, reading hundreds of sources to produce a sophisticated report.
- There’s also something called “Pages” that turns your research into a polished, shareable article, and “Labs” for playing with different experiments.
- Perplexity says it (and their third-party LLM partners) won’t train on your data.
However, if you want to write a paper using strictly MLA or APA style, you will need to handle the formatting yourself or use another tool that is made for it. Hence, if it is not made to accomplish that particular citation task it won’t be able to do it.
What makes Jenni AI so interesting?
Jenni AI is a writing workspace with AI Autocomplete as you type, direct AI editing commands (like “explain,” “translate,” or “simplify”), plus a built-in Citation Manager. It is a direct competitor of all the typical rewriting or writing web tools out there, but it is great at inline citations.
You can add in-text citations in multiple ways: you can highlight text and press “Cite,” or use the “@” symbol, or just paste a DOI/PMID. Not only that, you can pick among 2,600+ citation styles which is useful for academic students who must follow strict guidelines.
Hence if you want a single workspace where you can manage references from your PDFs or from the web and then add them as you type, you might prefer Jenni AI. Jenni also states it has “zero training on your data” which is good for teams or institutions that want to keep everything private.
Which is better for students?
Even though these tools are both geared toward academic tasks, they each have their strengths:
- If you need real-time info, go with Perplexity AI for scanning the latest policy or technology updates. You can verify sources quickly because the links and citations are right there. Pro/Deep Research modes are especially helpful for large projects or quick lit scans.
- If you need a single environment to write your entire paper with correct citations and references inline, Jenni AI is the one because of its integrated approach for drafting.
Using them together is the best approach. You find sources with Perplexity and then feed them into Jenni’s citation manager. It’s a combo that’s more reliable than any single route.
Plans and Pricing
| Tool | Plan | Price | What students get (highlights) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity AI | Free | $0 | Unlimited concise searches; 3 Pro searches/day; 3 Deep Research/day; 50 Labs queries/month; basic file Q&A; model choice. |
| Perplexity AI | Pro (individual) | $20/mo or $200/yr | Unlimited Pro searches; 500 Deep Research/day; 50 Labs queries/mo; choose advanced models; upload more files; private Spaces collaboration. |
| Perplexity AI | Max (power users) | $200/mo or $2,000/yr | Everything in Pro plus unlimited Labs/Reasoning access and earliest features (hyper-premium tier). |
| Perplexity AI | Enterprise Pro (teams) | $40/seat/mo or $400/seat/yr | Org repository & connectors (Drive/Dropbox/SharePoint/OneDrive/Box), SSO/SCIM, admin controls, data-privacy guarantees. |
| Jenni AI | Free | $0 | 200 AI-autocomplete words/day; 10 AI Chat messages; 10 PDF uploads; partial export; 2,600 citation styles with unlimited citations. |
| Jenni AI | Unlimited | $12/mo | Unlimited autocomplete/chat/uploads; full document export; access to latest features; live chat support. |
| Jenni AI | Teams/Institutions | Custom | Same core features + multi-seat pricing, analytics, coaching; “zero training on your data.” |
Student Scenarios
- Essay or lab report with a strict citation style (like APA/MLA/IEEE): It’s best to use Jenni’s Unlimited ($12/mo) for an all-in-one writing and citation approach. You can still use Perplexity’s free tier to quickly gather references.
- Current-events briefs or policy memos: Perplexity’s Pro plan ($20/mo) is perfect because it runs advanced, multi-source searches, so you can get real-time data with older references all in one place.
- Big capstone or thesis: Start drafting in Jenni with all your PDFs. If you need the latest info, hop into Perplexity to do a deep research, then bring references back into Jenni.
Academic Integrity Tip
Many universities require telling them if you used AI in your assignment. Also, using them will most likely trigger Turnitin or other such AI detectors. If you want to avoid then you need to use it only for brainstorming and finding citations, but don't use the entire text generated by them. If you still want to use the text generated by them then you need to use an AI humanizer like Deceptioner or Undetectable AI.
The Bottom Line
If you really want only one tool, and your class heavily emphasizes formatting or referencing, pick Jenni AI Unlimited because it does everything inside the editor. If you want a real-time search solution for cutting-edge topics with a transparent trail of citations, Perplexity AI is better. But the best is clearly using both, so you gather everything from Perplexity first, then write and cite smoothly in Jenni.
