Perplexity’s AI-first browser, Comet, is coming to Android, pulling the emerging AI browser war onto mobile screens. The free app runs on devices with Android 12 or later, with an iOS version in development, and puts Perplexity’s conversational search at the center of how you navigate the web on your phone.
What Comet brings to mobile
Comet is built around an assistant that can summarize pages, tackle complex questions, and show its reasoning as you browse. Rather than shrinking the desktop layout, Perplexity rethought the experience for smaller screens, adding a floating voice prompt that lets you “ask over” whatever you are reading and ingest context across tabs for better follow-up suggestions and summaries.
An integrated ad blocker, with an opt-in whitelist, lets users support trusted publishers while still cutting down on distractions. Perplexity’s engine is the default search inside Comet, keeping you in a tight loop of asking, scanning, verifying, and pivoting without jumping between separate apps.
Why this move matters
Owning the browser on mobile is strategically valuable, with Chrome handling roughly two-thirds of global mobile browsing and Safari most of the rest. Shifting from a standalone AI answer engine to a full mobile browser is Perplexity’s attempt to capture not just queries but the wider context around how people discover and consume information on the web.
Regulatory pressure from laws like the EU’s Digital Markets Act has forced platforms to offer more choice in defaults, marginally lowering the barrier for alternative browsers to gain a foothold. Even small nudges away from preinstalled options could be enough for AI-first browsers to establish a meaningful presence on mobile.
How Comet compares to AI rivals
Incumbent browsers are grafting AI onto traditional designs: Edge leans on Copilot, Chrome is rolling out generative features, Brave ships with its Leo assistant, and Firefox is experimenting with AI search partners while emphasizing privacy. On mobile, Arc on iOS and Opera’s Aria assistant show that there is appetite for reimagined, AI-forward browsing experiences.
Comet’s bet is to design the browser around an assistant that continuously reads what you have open, then synthesizes and cites information in real time. It aims to be a research co-pilot embedded in the browsing experience, rather than a chatbot bolted onto the side of a tab.
Business model and user experience
Comet launched on desktop with limited access for higher-tier subscribers before opening more broadly, while the Android app arrives as a free download. That mirrors big-browser playbooks: wrap search inside a browser to increase retention and cut acquisition costs.
Perplexity plans to layer in a conversational agent that can roam across sites, quick actions for common tasks, and a full password manager, all aimed at making Comet a daily driver rather than a niche research tool. The always-context-aware assistant could transform research and workflows, but it will live or die on cloud inference constraints like latency, data use, and battery impact on mobile devices.
The stakes for AI on mobile
If Comet can become a habit, it will challenge incumbents where they are strongest: turning intent into information with minimal friction. For publishers, an AI-first browser that blocks ads by default while summarizing pages raises familiar questions about traffic and monetization, even if whitelisting and prominent citations offer more collaborative paths forward.
For users, the pitch is speed and clarity: fewer taps, fewer lost tabs, and answers distilled from a messy web into something usable, as long as the assistant’s logic and data remain transparent and accurate. If that promise holds, Comet could be a genuine alternative to typing into a traditional address bar and combing through blue links—a new front in the browser wars, this time playing out on mobile screens.
Availability
Comet is available now in the Google Play Store for devices running Android 12 or higher. An iPhone and iPad version is planned, with timing yet to be announced.
