Back in July, Perplexity AI unleashed a new bit of software that the world wasn’t ready for. There had been a few rumblings about its imminent release. And then, like a comet, wham. Here was Perplexity Comet, a Chromium browser that integrates generative AI into a browser designed explicitly for it.
Then, on August 25, Perplexity AI announced Comet Plus, a more feature-rich version of the free Comet browser that had been available for the past month and a half. Comet Plus will give users access to “premium content from a group of trusted publishers and journalists.” Comet Plus costs $5 per month, but don’t X off this story in disgust just yet.
Perplexity Pro and Max subscribers will receive Comet Plus as part of their subscription for free. Only Perplexity’s free users will have to pay $5 per month to access Comet Plus, although they will also be able to use the free version of Comet soon.
a brighter-burning comet
“Users are exhausted by low-quality clickbait, high-friction experiences, and endless blue links to human slop and no answers,” says Perplexity AI’s announcement.
While the list of partnered publishers isn’t yet public and seems to still be in the midst of being hashed out, Perplexity AI says Comet Plus gives its users “direct access to the sites and content of participating publishers, empowers their AI assistants to complete tasks on those sites, and benefits from direct answers informed by the highest-quality content on the web.”
Publishers who’ve partnered with Perplexity AI to make their websites available to Comet Plus users, in turn, get a slice of the financial pie.
A quick recap of Comet’s brief but fiery history on planet Earth. All Perplexity Max subscribers who pay $200 per month or $2,000 per year received instant, automatic access as of Comet’s initial release in July 2025.
Anyone else could sign up for a waitlist for access, although it seemed that it was mostly Pro subscribers (who paid a much more affordable $20 per month or $200 per year) who were granted access. Then Perplexity AI opened up Comet to all Pro subscribers on August 13.
The amusing thing about Comet, even though it’s competing with Chrome for internet browser dominance, is that what underpins Comet is a Google technology. It’s based on Chromium, a free, open-source project developed by Google that serves as the foundation for many popular browsers, including Chrome itself.
Now we’re wondering if Google built the very technology that could make its star product, Chrome, extinct.
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