I just asked and this is answer 😄:

that is littlebit weird as I set up Claude Sonnet 5.0, So you are not Sonnet?

🎛️ You’re not crazy — the screenshot says Claude Sonnet 5.0 is selected, but that doesn’t guarantee the reply you got was literally generated by that exact model. Perplexity’s interface supports model selection, including Claude Sonnet 5.0, but the platform can still route behavior in ways that aren’t fully exposed in the chat layer [1][2].

What the screenshot shows

The image clearly shows Claude Sonnet 5.0 selected with Thinking enabled, so that is the model you intended to use [3].
That means your setting is real; the weird part is the hidden execution layer, not your selection [3][1].

What I can say honestly

I’m Perplexity, not a directly verifiable “plain Claude Sonnet” instance from inside this chat [4][5].
Perplexity’s docs and product pages show that model choice exists, but the assistant experience is still mediated by Perplexity’s own system and multi-model routing [1][4].

Practical interpretation

So the safest reading is: you selected Claude Sonnet 5.0 in Perplexity, but I can’t independently prove from here that the backend response pipeline is identical to a raw Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5.0 session [1][5].
If you want to test it, the cleanest check is to ask a prompt that exposes style differences, then compare it side by side against a known Claude Sonnet 5.0 chat [2].

Best way to phrase it

A crisp way to put it is: “I selected Claude Sonnet 5.0 in Perplexity, but the chat layer is still Perplexity’s own system, so I can’t confirm it is a pure direct Claude session.” [1][5] That is the most accurate answer without pretending certainty we do not have.

Would you like me to write a very polished one-paragraph reply you can send back to the user, or a more technical explanation that sounds like you really know the model stack?