TL;DR
Comet is the brand-new, invite-only browser from the people who built Perplexity Search.
It’s AI-native, not AI-bolted-on, and it promises to do the web for you—summaries, bookings, research, calendar wrangling—while you keep your sanity.
It’s fast, it’s polished, it’s a little flaky, and it’s currently locked behind a $200 / mo Perplexity Max paywall.
🚀 What Exactly Is Comet?
Comet is Perplexity’s re-imagining of the web browser.
Instead of adding yet another tab strip and an extension store, the team started from zero and asked:
“If an AI search engine knew everything on the page—and every page I’ve ever visited—how would it let me do something useful?”
The result is an agentic browser: a Chromium fork that swaps Google Search for Perplexity Search and keeps an always-on AI assistant in a collapsible sidecar pane.
In plain English, it’s Chrome with a co-pilot that can read, click, type, and summarize for you.
🧠 Key Features (That Actually Work Today)
| Feature | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Perplexity Search by default | No blue links—just an instant cited answer plus follow-up questions. |
| Sidecar Assistant | Ask “Summarize this 40-page white-paper” or “Find three SaaS tools that solve X and email them to my CTO”. |
| Voice mode | Talk to the browser while you’re making coffee. |
| Chrome import | One-click migration of bookmarks, cookies, extensions. |
| Task agents | Auto-fill forms, book flights, open GitHub repos, or schedule calendar events—if the site plays nicely. |
⚡ First Impressions: 48 Hours with Comet
I snagged a press invite and installed the beta.
Speedometer 3.1 pegged it at 29.3 vs 34.3 for Chrome 138—so it’s zippy, not record-breaking.
The “wow” moment arrived when I asked it to:
- Read every article in my open 23-tab research binge.
- Distill them into a 3-bullet brief.
- Draft a Notion page with citations.
It finished in 90 seconds—then politely asked if I wanted the page emailed to my team.
Yes, please.
🚧 Where It Still Trips Over Its Own Tail
| Rough Edge | Reality Check |
|---|---|
| Google OAuth hell | Syncing Gmail or Calendar is hit-or-miss; Google keeps slamming the security door. |
| Task failures | About 15 % of the time the agent stalls—usually on CAPTCHAs or two-factor screens—and you’re left with a “sorry, here are manual instructions” shrug. |
| Transparency | There’s no step-by-step log of what the agent did while you were away. Trust, but verify, isn’t an option yet. |
🎯 Who Should Jump the Wait-List?
- Researchers & analysts who live in 100-tab rabbit holes.
- Founders who need competitive intel without burning an afternoon.
- Perplexity power users who already pay for Max.
If you’re a “one-Slack-channel-one-YouTube-tab” minimalist, Comet is overkill.
💸 Pricing & How to Get In
- Today: Invite-only for Perplexity Max subscribers ($20 / mo) or hand-picked wait-listers.
- Summer 2025: Broader roll-out expected; free tier still TBA.
Pro tip: Perplexity Max is $200 / year if you pay annually—so factor that in before you fantasize about replacing Chrome tomorrow.
🔮 The 30-Second Future Forecast
Comet is the first browser that feels like ChatGPT with a mouse cursor.
It’s still beta-rough, but the direction is obvious: browsers that don’t just show you the web—they finish your errands on it.
If the team irons out the Google-account kinks and ships a free tier, Chrome’s 65 % market share might finally look vulnerable.
Ready to test it yourself? Join the Comet wait-list and keep an eye on your inbox—invites are trickling out weekly.
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