Uber Eats just gave me a year of Perplexity Pro — it may do the same for you too

I was doom scrolling through restaurants on Uber Eats earlier today, trying to decide what to order for lunch, to no avail. That’s when I noticed that the app has ads.

For some reason, my mind, while using the app, always goes into autopilot and pays no heed to the ads, although they’ve been there for a while now.

The app is not laden with them, and the ads are mostly related to the restaurants on the platform, but it isn’t a very clean experience either. While actually paying attention to the ads earlier today, I noticed one about a free Perplexity AI promotion for Uber One subscribers.

Considering that up until 2022, Uber One had 12 million members, and the number has likely increased since then, I’m here to tell you that you can claim a free year of Perplexity Pro (regularly worth $200) if you’re already paying for Uber One. Note: The free promotion is limited to users in the US and Canada.

For those unaware, Perplexity AI has been gaining ground in the AI chatbot market, and its primary strengths include its source transparency with citations for its answers, integration with other tools, and flexibility when it comes to the AI model of choice. Think of it as a one-stop-shop for different advanced AI models under one roof.

The tool lets you toggle between the default Perplexity model, Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3 Opus, Llama 3.1 70B-based Sonar Large and 3.1 405B-based Sonar Huge, and most importantly, OpenAI’s GPT-4o. It also lets you toggle between image generation capabilities powered by Playground v3, DALL-E 3, Stable Diffusion XL, and FLUX.1.

If you’re already paying for Uber One, it won’t hurt to try out Perplexity Pro for free. The platform doesn’t ask for any billing details, so you won’t be charged once the free subscription runs out.

For me, as mentioned earlier, the promotion showed up as a banner ad within the Uber Eats. However, after looking into the promotion, I realized that it doesn’t necessarily need to be claimed from within the food ordering app. Perplexity actually published a blog post regarding the promotion on August 1, but it went under the radar for us at AP.

According to its post, each “eligible” Uber One member will be emailed a unique code to claim the promotion. I checked my inbox, and lo and behold, I had an email from Uber dated August 1 with the unique code.

Check your email (the account connected to Uber) for an email with the subject “Uber One exclusive: 1 Year of Perplexity Pro.” You can claim the promotion directly from the email. The promotion’s terms and conditions note that the offer will expire on October 31. It also notes that to be eligible, you must be a current Uber One member. Considering that the terms are dated August 1, I’m speculating that you’d need to have an active Uber One membership that precedes August, though I haven’t been able to verify that. Elsewhere, the terms also note that users “must maintain active Uber One membership throughout the duration of the promo.”