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Perplexity has launched Comet, its own browser built from the ground up with generative AI at its core. Instead of embedding AI into existing browsers, the company designed Comet to fully integrate its capabilities into the browsing experience. The move positions Perplexity as a direct challenger to Google’s long-dominant Chrome, which has maintained a stronghold over the browser market for more than a decade. Early access to Comet remains limited, but the strategic ambitions behind it signal a major shift in the competitive landscape of browsers.
Check the comparison of ChatGPT vs Perplexity AI on our previous post
Perplexity Comet Launches with AI-Native Browser Capabilities
Perplexity released Comet as a Chromium-based browser, embedding AI features deeply into its structure. Chromium, the open-source engine developed by Google, powers both Chrome and several other browsers. With Comet, Perplexity uses that same engine but layers it with proprietary AI tools designed for real-time assistance and task execution.
The browser is currently available for macOS and Windows users, but access is gated. Only subscribers of Perplexity’s highest-tier plan, Perplexity Max, can currently download and use the browser. This premium plan was introduced on July 2, 2025, and costs $200 per month or $2,000 annually.
Read also on Perplexity Launch of $200 Max Plan with Advanced AI Tools and Early Access Features on our previous post
While the company states that it intends to offer a free version of Comet in the future, the exact timeline remains unclear. In the meantime, Perplexity Pro users, who pay $20 per month or $200 per year, can join a waitlist. However, there are no confirmed reports of Pro or free users gaining access yet. Some Pro users have reportedly been waiting for over two months without receiving invitations.
Comet is part of a broader shift toward “agentic” browsers—tools that allow users to delegate tasks to AI with minimal input. With Comet, users can ask questions related to their personal data such as email or calendar content, and the AI can summarize webpages, schedule meetings, or extract relevant information during browsing sessions.
Perplexity Eyes Expansion via Mobile Browser Integration
Under the expansion plan, Perplexity is already negotiating with the makers of mobile devices to preload the Comet browser into smartphones. The discussions were recently confirmed by CEO Aravind Srinivas, who told Reuters that they are in dialogue, which shows a possible attempt to substitute or even supplement default browsers on mobile platforms. Srinivas understood the difficulty in beating user inertia and said it is not easy to persuade mobile OEMs to abandon the default browser, such as Chrome, to Comet.
The stickiness of the browser may be fatal since users do not easily abandon built-in browsers unless persuaded to do so. Although Comet is currently only available to desktop users as a beta version, Perplexity plans to release it to other platforms within the next few months. There are no particular time or platform frames that have been given. This mobile strategy is consistent with what the company has proposed, i.e. to increase the reach of Comet to tens and hundreds of millions of users by the year to come. The plan to increase this growth will depend on settling the desktop version to the existing group of early testers who are expected to be in the hundreds of thousands.
AI Competition Heats Up as Browsers Enter a New Phase
Comet is launching at a time when AI companies are gearing up to sell accessible tools that go beyond the chat interface and give rise to true task managers and web agents. As Srinivas puts it Comet is an app that allows the users to connect to their digital lives more efficiently by executing complex actions in both web and local data spaces.Recently, Reuters wrote about OpenAI working on a browser based around agentic AI, which is able to process complicated workflows like making a trip or keeping a financial ledger. This latest wave of web interaction has an increasing number of people competing to bend it to their wills, some of the largest tech firms are secretly developing their own proprietary solutions.
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According to statcounter, chrome covers about 70 percent of the worldwide mobile web browser market. There is another 24 percent shared between Safari of Apple and Samsung browser, leaving little margins to new entrants. Nonetheless, Perplexity is said to be in negotiations with Apple and Samsung in an attempt to incorporate its AI search into system level assistants such as Siri or Bixby.Supported by big-time venture capitalists like Nvidia, Accel, Jeff Bezos, and the ex-Chief of Google, Eric Schmidt, Perplexity closed a round of $500 million this year. The offering was pegged at a value of the firm of $14 billion indicating that investors were confident that it would enter new markets of search and browser and create disruption there.The development of the browser will be followed as Comet comes a step to being widely available. It will have to be revealed whether Perplexity will be able to turn the initial hype into long-term adoption, but the company has made it clear that it is determined to compete with the established order of things in web browsing.
