Perplexity Comet Review: The AI Browser Changing the Web

Perplexity’s Comet browser changed how I work on the web. It imports my Chrome setup, runs a smart assistant in every tab, remembers my browsing context, and can even take control of pages to complete tasks. It blends a full Chromium browser with Perplexity’s AI assistant, research tools, and a growing set of agent capabilities.

In this article, I’ll walk through what Comet does, how it compares to traditional browsers and standalone AI tools, and where it still falls short. I’ll keep the same flow I followed while testing: quick tour, key features, use cases, limits, pricing, and a final verdict for different types of users.

Perplexity Comet

Quick Comparison Table

Feature/Aspect	Comet Browser	Traditional Browser (e.g., Chrome)	Standalone AI (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini)	Other Agent Browsers (e.g., Atlas)
Base	Chromium	Chromium	Web/app-based	Varies
Built-in Assistant	Yes (Perplexity)	No (needs extensions)	Yes (in-app)	Yes
Agent Control of Browser	Yes (paid plans)	No	No	Yes
Model Switching via Slash Command	Yes (/gpt, /claude, /gemini, /grok)	No	Model fixed per app	Varies
Context From Tabs	Yes (current + multiple)	No	Limited (copy/paste context)	Yes
Context From Browsing History	Yes	No	No	Varies
One-click Page Summaries	Yes	No	Varies (extensions)	Yes
Research Mode (multi-source)	Yes	No	Varies	Varies
Shortcut Prompts	Yes	No	Varies	Varies
Connectors (Gmail, Calendar, Notion, Slack, GitHub)	Yes (per shortcut)	No	Varies by app	Varies
YouTube Summaries and Navigation	Yes	No	Varies	Varies
Comment/Inbox Summaries	Yes	No	Varies	Varies
Spreadsheet Automation	Yes (via agent)	No	No	Varies
E-commerce Price/Review Compare	Yes	No	No	Varies
Speed	Moderate (agent is slower than manual)	Fast	Fast	Moderate
Reliability	Good with occasional stalls	High	High	Varies
Tab Management by Agent	Not reliable yet	N/A	N/A	Varies
Security Considerations	Prompt injection risk; verify facts	N/A	Source-based hallucination risk	Similar risks
Price	Paid plans from about $20/mo	Free	Varies	Varies

Individual Tool/Product Analysis

What Is Comet Browser?

Comet is a Chromium-based browser with Perplexity’s assistant built in. It migrates your Chrome bookmarks, extensions, and saved passwords. New tabs open the Perplexity dashboard. The assistant lives in a sidebar, accepts text, files, and screenshots, and can use voice prompts. It understands the current page, multiple open tabs, and your recent browsing history.

It lets you set the model via slash command. If the model picker doesn’t choose what you want, type /gpt, /claude, /gemini, or /grok to force a model. It can summarize any article with one click, suggest prompts like “explain significance,” “make a summary,” “outline alternative views,” and “rewrite for a newsletter,” and answer questions about highlighted text.

The standout feature is agent control. On paid plans, Comet can take the wheel—navigate tabs, click links, fill forms, compare prices, add items to carts, proofread docs, and create calendar events. You’ll see a blue outline when it’s in control and a green indicator when an agent is running in a tab.

Traditional Browser + Extensions

A standard Chromium browser is fast, reliable, and stable. You can add separate extensions to get a fraction of what Comet does—note-taking, summary tools, and AI chat—but they don’t share tab context or browsing history. You’ll copy/paste content constantly, and nothing ties together across tabs or apps.

Traditional browsers also lack built-in research workflows and agent control. You can open many tabs and work quickly, but if you want AI to act on the page, you have to intervene manually or hope an extension supports a specific site.

Standalone AI Assistants

Running ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini in separate apps still works well for Q&A, drafting, and brainstorming. But they don’t see your open tabs or history unless you feed them data. They won’t control your browser, act on your behalf, or coordinate actions across multiple sites.

Comet folds these assistants into one place. If you pay separately for multiple AI tools, Comet may replace some subscriptions since you can switch models inside the assistant. The tradeoff: standalone apps may still be faster for pure chat and long-form drafting, while Comet is strongest when working inside your live browsing context.

Head-to-Head Comparison

Setup and Onboarding

Comet: Imports bookmarks, extensions, and passwords. New tab is the Perplexity dashboard.
Traditional Browser: You pick and install AI-related extensions one by one.
Standalone AI: No browser integration. You run them in separate tabs or apps.

Assistant and Context Awareness

Comet: Sidebar assistant sees the current page, multiple tabs, and recent history. One-click summarization and prompt suggestions help on any page.
Traditional Browser: No native assistant or page-aware chat.
Standalone AI: Great at text chat, but blind to your tabs and history unless you paste content.

Model Control and Modes

Comet: Switch models via slash commands. Choose Search, Research, or Labs modes. Add source connectors (Gmail, Calendar, Notion, Slack, GitHub) per shortcut.
Traditional Browser: Model control depends on whatever extension you installed.
Standalone AI: You’re locked to the model in that app unless you switch apps.

Agent Capabilities

Comet: Takes control of pages to click, search, fill forms, compare products, add to cart, comment on Google Docs, and create events. You can run multiple agents at once across tabs.
Traditional Browser: No agent control.
Standalone AI: No page control.

Research and Fact-Checking

Comet: Research mode pulls from the web, academic papers, social discussion, and finance. It can fact-check articles and provide counterarguments.
Traditional Browser: You research manually and compile results yourself.
Standalone AI: Can research if connected to the web, but you still switch context.

Content Creation and Repurposing

Comet: Summarizes YouTube videos, extracts key takeaways, jumps to interesting moments, and drafts tweets, blog posts, and scripts from articles and videos.
Traditional Browser: You do the heavy lifting.
Standalone AI: Can create drafts, but lacks page context and video navigation.

Pros and Cons

Comet Browser

Pros:

Assistant sees page content, multiple tabs, and browsing history
Quick summarization and research modes with source controls
Slash-command model switching
Custom shortcuts with connectors (Gmail, Calendar, Notion, Slack, GitHub)
Agent can control pages and complete hands-on tasks
YouTube, social, email, and spreadsheet workflows in one place

Cons:

Agent speed is slower than manual actions
Occasional stalls or disconnects; may require restarting
Tab organization/closing via agent is unreliable
Doesn’t remember personal form data for reuse yet
Risk of prompt injection and occasional hallucinations; verify critical info

Traditional Browser + Extensions

Pros:

Fast and stable
Full extension ecosystem
No agent-related misclicks or stalls

Cons:

No shared context across tabs and history
No built-in AI assistant or agent
Switching between tools is manual and time-consuming

Standalone AI Assistants

Pros:

Strong chat, drafting, and brainstorming
Often faster for long-form text
Familiar interfaces

Cons:

No page awareness
No agent actions
Requires constant copy/paste and context switching

Use Cases

Replace Multiple AI Subscriptions With One Assistant

Comet’s assistant can run Sonar or force GPT, Claude, Gemini, or Grok via slash commands. If you’re paying for several AI tools, a single Comet plan can cover many of those needs while keeping all activity in your browser context.

Summarize, Fact-Check, and Interrogate Articles

One-click summaries
Ask questions about highlighted text
Fact-check articles and get a verdict
Request counterarguments to evaluate claims

These tools make it easy to form an opinion fast and verify accuracy before you share or act on information.

On YouTube, the assistant offers:

Summarize the video
Extract key takeaways
Scroll to the next interesting moment

It can also analyze comments for sentiment and themes, which is helpful when you want a quick read on viewer feedback without wading through every comment.

Creator Workflows: Feedback, Ideas, and Analytics

Summarize comment sentiment and suggestions on your videos
Break down out-of-niche videos and adapt their narrative structure to your topic
Analyze channel analytics and propose new titles based on recent top performers

This trims hours off audience research and ideation.

Document Proofreading and Editing (Google Docs)

Agent mode can:

Read your draft
Add comments with suggested fixes
Switch to Suggesting mode
Make edits for review

If you’re on the free plan without agent access, it will still proofread and give you feedback in the sidebar.

Working in Parallel Across Tabs

You can run multiple agents at once. While one agent proofreads a document, another can find calendar availability and add a meeting. Comet shows which tabs are running agents so you can continue working elsewhere.

Research Mode With Custom Sources

Create a research shortcut that:

Sets mode to Research
Adds academic papers, social discussion, and finance sources
Produces a comprehensive, source-backed analysis with a recommendation

I used this to compare Nvidia and Apple and got structured results with charts, risks, and a clear verdict.

Keep Google and Other Search Engines Handy

Type “google.com + space” in the address bar to search Google. The same trick works for DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Yahoo. This is a Chromium feature, but it’s useful inside Comet when you want classic search behavior.

Daily News Triage With Feedly + Agent

I load my favorite blogs and newsletters into Feedly. Then I have the agent:

Open each newsletter and list only news mentioned by multiple newsletters
Skim 200+ RSS items from company blogs and tech sites and assemble a roundup
Save the best prompts as shortcuts for one-click daily runs

If the agent disconnects, a quick restart usually fixes it. The output gives a high-level snapshot of what matters most in the last 24 hours.

The built-in “trending on social” shortcut:

Opens X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Reddit
Scrolls feeds and compiles trending topics and events
Summarizes major announcements, new models, and tools

It can also audit a specific profile to find that account’s top post by engagement.

E-commerce: Compare, Summarize, and Add to Cart

On Amazon (and across sites) the assistant can:

Compare prices across platforms
Find similar products
Summarize reviews
Add the best option to your cart based on criteria

It can fill forms too, although it doesn’t remember your info for future forms yet. Agent actions here are slower than doing it yourself but useful when you want to offload the work.

Email: Inbox Summaries and Drafting

Comet can summarize your inbox effectively. Drafting emails is supported but sometimes stalls; in my tests, the summary feature worked, while composing an email got stuck.

Repurpose Content: Article → Tweet/Script; Video → Blog

Turn articles into tweets or 5-minute video scripts
Turn YouTube videos into 500-word blog posts
Keep key facts intact while changing the format

This saves time if you publish across platforms.

Stocks: Technical and Fundamental Pass

Give it a ticker and ask for both technical and fundamental analysis. It will pull charts, run its analysis, and summarize risks and outlook. Double-check any financial advice before acting.

Assistive Tasks: Reservations and Bookings

The agent can search, navigate booking pages, and try to complete reservations. It can get stuck on disabled buttons, so you may need to step in or confirm a new time slot. The same approach applies to hotels.

Spreadsheet Automation (Google Sheets)

Create shortcuts for repeat actions like:

Pull the real tool name from each URL by reading Open Graph data
Paste results into the correct column
Confirm completion with a screenshot

It’s slower than manual for small lists, but great when you want it running in the background while you do something else.

Troubleshooting Other Web Apps

If a web app shows an error you can’t diagnose, the agent can click around, review logs or states, and propose fixes. I’ve used it to identify configuration problems and resolve blockers I couldn’t figure out on my own.

Pricing Comparison

Comet agent features require a paid plan. The entry plan runs about $20/month.
Within Comet, you can run different models (/gpt, /claude, /gemini, /grok, Sonar). On a higher tier (“Max”), more models are available (e.g., Opus 4.1, ChatGPT o3 Pro).
If you’re already paying for separate access to multiple AI assistants, consolidating them inside Comet may save money while adding agent features and browser context.

Exact pricing and model availability can change, so check inside Comet for the current list.

Final Verdict

Comet is the first browser I’ve used that feels like a real assistant inside every tab. It sees page content and history, flips between models with a command, and can take control to complete work I’d normally do manually. It’s not perfect yet: agents can stall, page control is slower than a human, and tab management commands aren’t reliable. You still need to watch for prompt injection and double-check anything important.

Here’s how I’d choose:

Pick Comet if you research daily, create content often, or want an assistant that can act across your browsing. It’s especially strong when running multiple agents in parallel.
Stick with a traditional browser if you value speed above all and prefer to click through tasks yourself. Add AI via extensions only when needed.
Use standalone AI assistants if your work is mostly long-form drafting, brainstorming, or Q&A without live web context.

Comet is already good enough to replace several tools I used to juggle. The more you create shortcuts, pick the right model for each task, and let agents handle background work, the more time you get back. The biggest bottleneck is speed. The moment agent actions get faster, this approach will become the default way to work online. Until then, it’s still worth adopting for everything you don’t want to do by hand and for the complex tasks you can’t do by hand.

Perplexity Comet Review: The AI Browser Changing the Web

Quick Comparison Table