# Perplexity — AI Agent vs MCP? When To Use Each (& When You Need Both)

- Company: Perplexity (perplexity.ai)
- Announced: 2026-10-09
- Category: not stated
- Coverage: not counted
- Announcement: no
- Group: routine
- Source: https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/agent-vs-mcp
- Record: https://forck.live/items/18783-ai-agent-vs-mcp-when-to-use-each-when-you-need-both
- Subject: Perplexity

Perplexity's guide explains the difference between AI agents, which autonomously decide actions to achieve goals, and the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard for connecting AI applications to external tools and data. It provides criteria for when to use each approach, when to combine them, and when to use predefined workflows instead.

## Evidence

Verbatim from https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/agent-vs-mcp:

> An AI agent is software that decides its own actions and tool calls to achieve a specific goal, and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for how AI applications connect to external tools and data.

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