Difference Between Single Artificial Neuron and Perceptron

What is Single Artificial Neuron?

A single artificial neuron is the basic computational unit of a neural network.
It receives input features, multiplies them with weights, adds a bias, and passes the result through an activation function to produce an output.
The output may be a probability or a continuous value depending on the activation function used.

Examples of activation functions: sigmoid, ReLU, tanh, step

What is Perceptron?

A perceptron is the simplest type of artificial neuron that uses a step (threshold) activation function to classify inputs into one of two classes.
It produces a binary output (0 or 1) based on whether the weighted sum exceeds a threshold.

It is mainly used for linearly separable binary classification problems.

FeatureSingle Artificial NeuronPerceptron
General conceptBroad term for one neuronSpecific type of neuron
Activation functionCan be sigmoid, ReLU, tanh, stepOnly step (threshold)
Output typeContinuous / probabilityBinary (0 or 1)
LearningSmooth learning using gradientsHard decision learning
Error reductionGradualOnly when misclassified
Used in deep learningYesNo
Example output0.668, 0.720 or 1