Perplexity is launching its Comet AI browser that provides agent-powered navigation to the masses free of cost, taking agent-based browsing from the early adopters to a mass audience. In addition to the broader release, the company is rolling out a new background assistant for Max subscribers, establishing Comet as not just a productivity play but also an existential threat to dominant browsers and search engines.
A Free AI Browser, With Sidecar Help Built In
Comet’s main draw is a persistent sidecar assistant that hangs alongside the browser, answering questions related to the page being viewed — summarizing articles, pulling out key facts, and helping guide you through cluttered layouts. The side panel can also handle web content, allowing users to turn a long report into a summary or compare information from tabs without having to copy and paste objects.
Free access includes this sidecar experience and a suite of topic-based tools, including:
- Discover for news
- Spaces for projects
- Shopping for deals
- Travel for planning
- Finance for budget tracking
- Sports to catch up on scores and schedules
The goal is obvious: to make AI-led browsing a daily default, rather than something that’s relegated to the power users in your audience.
Initial demand was strong, according to Perplexity, following Comet’s limited release to its highest-tier users, with millions of people joining the wait list. Widening the browser to everyone right now is also an advantageous wager: Continued usage is the best method of demonstrating that these agentic features actually deliver genuine productivity benefits.
Max Tier Gets a Multitasking Background Assistant
Comet also introduces a background assistant for Max subscribers that it says has been built to multitask. It’s a small set of assistants organized using a dashboard interface that feels like mission control, said its CEO, Aravind Srinivas. The agent can toil while you look away, then nudge you at critical points for approvals.
It might go something like this:
- Generate and queue an email for your approval
- Find the cheapest concert tickets and put those into a cart
- Search for a direct flight on a given date that satisfies seat and timing constraints
The dashboard offers real-time task status and visibility to handoff points, whether tapping one to Send it or vetoing a choice in order to take over the whole step. The aim is reasonable autonomy, not a black-box bot that steals your credit card.
Max users also still get access to higher-performance AI models and an email assistant that can execute inbox triage, match tone in replies, and schedule meetings. Comet’s Supporting Layer gels it together: web read with sidecar, delegate work to the BG agent, draft CXP.
Pricing and Upsells Built Around Comet’s Free Core
Comet’s free tier is intended to maximize reach, with the company monetizing its plans that customers pay for.
The Pro plan is more geared toward professional use, featuring models with more detail, media exports, and file analysis. The Max plan, which is for heavy enterprise-grade usage, includes early access to new features such as the background assistant and a more powerful email agent.
And then there’s Comet Plus, an upcoming $5-per-month add-on that includes AI-enhanced news curation — an alternative to traditional aggregators. Pro and Max subscribers receive Comet Plus, which makes Perplexity a low-friction upsell for free users who just want to have a smarter feed without having to jump into a full pro level.
High-stakes battle for the AI browser market
Perplexity’s free action falls onto crowded ground. Chrome continues to be the world’s dominant browser, according to StatCounter, with Google’s browser accounting for about two-thirds of desktop use. WebKit, Edge, and Firefox drag significantly behind. On the AI side, incumbents are integrating co-pilots right into browsers, from Microsoft’s Copilot in Edge to Gemini features in Chrome.
Start-ups are no slouches, either. The Browser Company is still automating and designing in its DIY cocktail, and already the industry is abuzz about new AI-forward browser experience products from big model-makers. With that in the rear-view, Comet has to win on two fronts: the integrity of its agentic workflows, and that time savings being immediately, provably apparent at a glance for any given task.
The bar’s higher than it sounds. Summaries need to be true to the source material, shopping comparisons must be both accurate and transparent, and background tasks require strong ways of checkpointing them in order to not blunder. “For enterprises specifically, you’ll have the data handling and permissions scrutinized hard with the demand for clear user control and auditable actions placed on your workload before it’s trusted to an assistant.”
What to watch as Comet climbs in real-world use
Three signs will indicate if Comet’s strategy is working:
- Daily active use of the sidecar: if it becomes people’s default way of reading and acting on the web, the free tier will feed a healthy funnel.
- How often tasks complete in the background without user intervention — and how gracefully and appropriately the system promotes those tasks when it does.
- Integrations with calendars, emails, and commerce flows: how often users can remain inside Comet vs. context switching.
If Perplexity can offer trusty autonomy with reasonable guardrails, a free Comet might nudge the market to agent-first browsing. Otherwise, users will default back to tab stacks and search boxes. Either way, opening the gates now guarantees the verdict will be determined by real-world behavior, not demos.
