Introduction

Comet Browser — driven by Perplexity’s Comet Assistant — turns spending into an AI-driven workflow. The assistant reads pages and PDFs, synthesizes findings across tabs, and (with permission) performs limited actions like clicking and form-filling. Comet Browser vs Perplexity Assistant. That’s powerful for multi-step research and repetitive shopping flows, but it increases the attack surface and introduces new security vectors (prompt injection, “CometJacking”) that must be hardened. Quick verdict: Comet is the most complete AI-native browser we’ve tested for multi-tab synthesis and agentic workflows (desktop + Android).Comet Browser vs Perplexity Assistant Excellent for researchers, content creators, and power shoppers who accept risk and apply hardening. Avoid agentic features for high-trust finance or enterprise work until you test and lock down policies.

Comet Browser: The AI-Powered Browser Changing Everything

Comet Browser is Perplexity’s Chromium-based browser integrated with a persistent assistant — the Comet Assistant. Rather than treating the assistant as a separate chat window, Comet makes it a first-class, always-available actor in the browsing session. The assistant can:

• Read and absorb multiple open tabs and attached PDFs, then produce consolidated syntheses with citations.
• Perform user-legal actions such as clicking buttons, filling forms, and adding items to carts.
• Execute multi-step tasks going on tabs.

Perplexity launched Comet in mid–2025 and iterated rapidly on features and platform support (desktop + Android). The vendor describes permission prompts and guardrails; independent audits and security researchers have shown multiple exploit scenarios that increase the need for user hardening and conservative defaults.

Comet Assistant: The AI Agent That Browses for You

The Comet Assistant is an agentic assistant embedded in the browser. “Agentic” here means it can act autonomously (within permission boundaries) on behalf of the user. Key capabilities include:

• Synthesis: Summarize a set of open tabs and PDFs into a single cohesive output with citations.
• Cross-document reasoning: Compare values and claims across pages (for example, spec differences across three product pages plus a datasheet).
• Agentic actions (when allowed): Click elements, populate fields, and try multi-step flows.
• Allowed flow: Ask the user before building sensitive actions.

Agentic workflows badly speed up repetitive tasks but multiply risk. A misinterpreted element or hidden instruction could trigger unwanted actions or reveal keen data. Treat agentic features as powerful helpers that require guardrails.

Feature Face-Off: Comet Browser vs Comet Assistant

Area	Comet Browser (Comet Assistant)	Typical Chatbot + Browser
Agentic actions (click/fill)	Yes — built-in agent + permission flow	Usually No (requires scripts/extensions)
Multi-tab context	Native multi-tab synthesis & long tasks	Limited (manual copy/paste or upload)
Platform availability	Desktop (Chromium) + Android	Varies by vendor
Privacy & security	New attack surface (prompt injection / CometJacking)	Lower if no agentic actions
Extension Compatibility	Supports most Chromium extensions	Depends on the browser
Pricing	Free tier + paid tiers (evolving)	Varies widely

Publishing note: Include side-by-side screenshots in your CMS (synthesis output, permission prompt, agentic action demo) for visual proof.

Why Comet Matters: The AI Browser Changing Everything

Comet transforms the browser from a passive content renderer into an active assistant. If you perform cross-page research, long-form drafting, or repetitive web tasks, Comet can save hours by automating multi-step actions and synthesizing sources. But this shifts some trust from the user to code: the assistant reads more content, acts in your session, and therefore increases the chance of unwanted behaviors. Decision-makers and security teams must weigh automation benefits vs. new attack surfaces.

Comet Research Secrets: AI-Powered Knowledge in Action

Comet’s most distinctive value is synthesizing content across tabs and PDFs. Rather than copying text into a separate tool, Comet ingests pages and produces consolidated outputs with inline citations. High-value use cases include:

• Literature reviews — combine several papers and extract methodological differences.
• Market analysis — synthesize prices and specs across competitor product pages.
• Fact-checking — collect and highlight contradictions across articles.

Best practice for reproducible publishing: When publishing synthesis-based content, include the exact prompt, the list of URLs, timestamps, and any hallucinations or citation mismatches. That makes your results verifiable.

Agentic Actions: How Comet’s AI Can Do Things for You

Agentic actions are what set Comet apart from read-only assistants. With explicit user permission, the assistant may:

• Click buttons or links.
• Fill fields (name, address, search boxes)..

perk: Faster workflows, fewer manual errors, and the skill to orchestrate multi-tab tasks without external automation.

Risks: The aide might misidentify an element, follow hidden instructions injected into page content, or inadvertently tell data. Security researchers have demonstrated flows where agentic features enabled scam purchases or data exfiltration. Rule of thumb: only enable agentic actions on sites you trust.

Comet Multi-Task & Behavior: See AI in Action Across Tabs

Perplexity designed Comet to hold extended cross-tab context and to run longer tasks. Notable behaviors:

• Better attention and context retention across multiple open tabs.
• Permission prompts before potentially dangerous actions.
• Consolidated outputs (e.g., a 300-word synthesis plus three citations).
  

Reproducible Test to Run:

open three product pages + one PDF; ask Comet for a 300-word methodology synthesis. Measure completion time, accuracy of citations, hallucination rate, and whether permission dialogs were appropriate.

Stability, Speed & Extension Compatibility

• Responsive UI for normal browsing.
• Noticable slowdowns occur under heavy agentic workloads — CPU/RAM spikes are observed.
• Some privacy/security extensions may interfere with agentic features.

Recommendation: Measure CPU and RAM under agentic load and report idle vs. agentic session peaks in any benchmark you publish.

Comet on Mobile: Android Features & Cross-Device Magic

Comet offers an Android app that retains summarization and many assistant features. Cross-device sync (bookmarks, history, assistant states) has been rolled out gradually, and some advanced agentic features may be gated behind paid tiers.

Tip: test touch interactions, mobile checkout flows, and any UI-specific behaviors — mobile layouts can surface different attack vectors.

Comet Browser vs Perplexity Assistant Pricing & Availability

Perplexity historically used invite/early-access before transitioning to free + paid tiers. Pricing and gating have changed rapidly; capture the vendor’s pricing page with a screenshot and date when publishing to avoid stale claims.

Security, privacy & known vulnerabilities — Must-Read

Major Risk Classes

1. Prompt injection / indirect prompt injection: Malicious page content that influences the assistant’s parsing or synthesis, causing it to produce or act on incorrect instructions.
2. CometJacking: Crafted pages designed to trick the assistant into performing harmful actions (submitting forms, making purchases).
3. Scam purchase flows: Fake checkouts that trick the assistant into adding items or attempting payment flows.
4. Hidden script triggers: Dynamic page content that hides malicious instructions visible only to the assistant.

Independent audits and media coverage have shown realistic examples of these risks. Perplexity introduced guardrails, but user hardening is essential.

Real-World Risks: What Auditors Discovered About Comet

• Indirect prompt injection: A page contains a hidden instruction that nudges the assistant to include or act on content that contradicts the user’s request.
• Scam purchase flow: A fake storefront uses obfuscated markup to cause the assistant to click an “authorize” button.
• Hidden script triggers: A page dynamically reveals instructions only when the assistant queries DOM attributes.

Operational rule: Disable agentic actions by default and only enable them for well-known, trusted domains.

Comet Mitigation: How Comet Browser vs Perplexity Assistant Protects You

Perplexity Added several Mitigations:

• Guardrails mark external content as untrusted.
• System-level prompts and policies to reduce risky behaviors.
• Permission dialogs for agentic actions.

These help but don’t eliminate risk. Vendors cannot replace good user-side hardening.

Who Should Use Comet? Find Out With Our Decision Matrix

• Power researchers & content pros: High automation need + moderate trust tolerance → Good fit with hardening.
• E-commerce power users: High automation need + moderate trust tolerance → Good fit if you accept risk and harden.
• Enterprise & finance: Low trust tolerance → Avoid agentic features; prefer read-only mode or enterprise tools with SSO.
• Casual users: Low automation need → Try free tier with agentic features off.

Include an interactive visual in your CMS so readers can select risk tolerance and see recommended settings.

Comet Alternatives: Which AI Browser Fits You Best?

• ChatGPT / OpenAI Chat with browsing: Chat-first, no built-in agentic web actions.
• Edge + Copilot experiments: Microsoft’s web experiments offer agentic features in enterprise contexts (SSO, admin controls).
• Other AI browsers (Opera, experimental builds): different trade-offs between automation and privacy.

For strong enterprise security, prefer tools with enterprise controls, SSO, and audited integrations.

Pros & Cons Comet Browser vs Perplexity Assistant

Pros

• Native agentic automation across tabs.
• Strong multi-document synthesis abilities.
• Chromium compatibility and familiar UI.
• Rapid vendor iteration.

Cons

• New attack surface: prompt injection / CometJacking.
• Slowdowns under heavy agentic load.
• Pricing and feature gating change rapidly.

FAQs Comet Browser vs Perplexity Assistant

Final verdict: Comet Browser vs Perplexity Assistant

Comet is a meaningful step toward an Assistant-first browser. It’s powerful for research, shopping, and multi-step tasks. But agentic automation increases security risk — organizations must test and harden before wide adoption. To make a credible, authoritative article that outranks runners, follow three core principles: