According to XDA-Developers, the Comet browser, created by Perplexity, is positioning itself as a true AI-native alternative to Chrome and Edge. The browser is built on the Chromium engine, ensuring full extension and website compatibility, and features like agentic browsing can execute complex commands across open tabs. It offers native apps for Windows, Mac, and Android, with an iOS version hoped for soon. A key advanced feature, integrated workspaces that connect to email and calendar, is part of the Perplexity Max subscription priced at $200 per month. The author, Mahnoor Faisal, writing in October and November 2025, details how Comet has fundamentally changed their workflow by handling tedious research and summarization tasks.
The Agentic Difference
Here’s the thing: adding an AI sidebar to a browser, like Microsoft did with Copilot, isn’t revolutionary. It’s a bolt-on. Comet’s whole pitch is that the AI isn’t an add-on; it’s the operating system. The “agentic browsing” concept is what makes that real. Instead of you managing tabs and copying info between them, you give the browser a goal. “Compare these three laptops” isn’t a search query; it’s a job assignment. The browser reads your open tabs, synthesizes the data, and gives you a digest. That’s a fundamentally different relationship with your browser. It goes from being a window you look through to being an assistant you delegate to. And that’s a massive shift if it works reliably.
Stakeholder Shakeup
So who wins and loses if this catches on? For everyday users drowning in tabs, it’s a potential productivity lifeline. The promise of cutting research time in half is incredibly compelling. But there’s a catch, right? The really powerful workspace integrations are locked behind that steep $200/month Perplexity Max tier. That immediately segments the market into casual users and enterprise/professional ones who might justify the cost.
For developers, the Chromium base is a huge relief. It means they don’t have to test for another rendering engine. Their extensions just work. But long-term, if the AI agent becomes the primary interface, does it change how websites are built? If users are having an AI summarize your content instead of clicking through pages, what does that do for ad revenue or site engagement metrics? It’s a weird future where your content is being consumed but your page views might drop.
The Ecosystem Play
Look, Perplexity isn’t just building a browser. They’re building a gateway. Comet feeds directly into their core AI search product, creating a seamless loop from question to answer with source verification. It’s a classic ecosystem lock-in play. Get people using your browser for its smart features, and they’ll naturally lean on your AI. That’s a direct challenge to Google’s and Microsoft’s models. They’ve been trying to bolt AI onto their existing empires, but Perplexity is building from the ground up. The big question is whether they can scale and polish it fast enough before Chrome and Edge simply copy the best ideas and integrate them deeper by default.
Is The Future Here?
The XDA article is clearly enthusiastic, almost like a conversion story. And that’s fine—it takes that kind of passion to break the Chrome/Edge duopoly. But let’s be skeptical for a second. Will it really handle every complex research task flawlessly? Can it avoid the hallucinations that plague all LLMs? The source-citing feature from Perplexity is a critical guardrail, but it’s not foolproof.
Basically, Comet feels like a compelling preview of where browsing is headed. It makes traditional search results—that “wall of ten blue links”—feel archaic. Whether Comet itself becomes the mainstream choice or just forces the giants to move faster, the user wins. The alternative mentioned, Zen, based on Firefox, shows there’s appetite for change on different fronts too. The browser wars are heating up again, and this time, it’s not about JavaScript speed. It’s about intelligence.
