Perplexity opens Comet browser free to everyone worldwide
Comet dropped its Max-subscription requirement and waitlist, three months after a limited July launch drew a waitlist Perplexity said reached millions.
- Models & capabilities
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Perplexity made its Comet browser available as a free download worldwide, removing both the waitlist and the requirement to be on its $200-a-month Max subscription plan that had gated access since a limited July 2025 launch. Chief executive Aravind Srinivas said the goal was to make Comet available “to everyone in the world, forever” rather than treat it as a premium add-on.
Comet builds an AI assistant into the browser itself rather than as a separate chat window: it can summarise pages, answer questions about what a user is viewing, and carry out multi-step tasks such as organising tabs, drafting emails or comparing products across sites, without the user switching to a separate app. Perplexity said the July waitlist had grown to millions of sign-ups, and that early users asked six to eighteen times more questions on their first day than the company had expected.
The move positioned Comet as a direct entrant in the nascent AI-browser category alongside offerings tied to OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, betting that free, wide distribution mattered more than near-term subscription revenue for establishing a foothold against Chrome’s dominant market share. It also extended a broader pattern among AI companies of giving away agentic browsing and search products for free while monetising elsewhere, on the premise that the browser itself is a strategic surface for capturing user intent rather than a standalone revenue product.