Perplexity's Comet browser goes mainstream: what Australians should know

Posted: 25 June 2026 · Category: AI Assistants & Chatbots

TL;DR: Comet, Perplexity's agentic AI browser, is now free for everyone and runs on Mac, Windows, Android and iOS. It can read pages, draft emails, fill carts and run errands while you browse. That power is also the problem: independent researchers have repeatedly tricked agentic browsers into leaking data through hidden instructions on web pages. Worth a try for research and tab-wrangling. Don't connect it to your email or banking yet.

What changed

Comet launched in July 2025 locked behind Perplexity's $200-a-month Max plan. On 2 October 2025 Perplexity threw the doors open: the browser is now free to download worldwide. A $5-a-month Comet Plus add-on buys access to paywalled journalism from outlets like CNN and The Washington Post, and the heavier assistant features still sit behind Pro and Max.

It is no longer desktop-only either. After landing on Mac and Windows, Comet reached Android in November 2025 and iOS in March 2026 — so it now runs on every major platform.

The bigger story is the race. Comet is Perplexity's bet that the browser, not the chat box, is where AI assistants belong. OpenAI made the same bet with ChatGPT Atlas, launched in October 2025 with ChatGPT baked into the navigation bar and an "agent mode" that acts on pages for you. (Update, 20 September 2026: OpenAI lost that bet. It announced the deprecation on 9 July 2026 and Atlas stopped working on 9 August 2026, with agentic browsing moved into the ChatGPT desktop app and a Chrome extension.)

Why it matters for Australians

An agentic browser is a genuine step up from a chat window. Instead of copying a page into ChatGPT, you ask the browser itself to summarise it, compare three quotes across open tabs, or draft a reply. For a busy operator juggling research, that saves real time.

The catch is the same for Australians as for everyone, and it is serious. Throughout late 2025, security researchers at Brave and LayerX showed Comet could be hijacked by indirect prompt injection — hidden instructions buried in a web page, a calendar invite or a URL that the AI obeys as if you typed them. Demonstrated attacks pulled data from connected Gmail accounts and even targeted saved passwords, with no obvious action from the user. Perplexity has been patching, but this is a category-wide weakness, not a one-off bug. Atlas faced the same class of risk before it was discontinued.

For Australian small businesses, that lands on data you are obliged to protect under the Privacy Act. An assistant with live access to your inbox and client files is exactly what an injection attack wants to reach.

Does this change our recommendation?

Not for sensitive work. Comet is worth trying as a faster research and reading tool — keep it signed out of your email, banking and CRM until the security story matures. The same caution applied to Atlas, and to whatever replaces it.

See how the two stacked up in our Comet review and our ChatGPT Atlas post-mortem.

Sources

• Perplexity — "The Internet is Better on Comet" (primary): https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/comet-is-now-available-to-everyone-worldwide (Comet free worldwide, 2 October 2025).
• TechCrunch — "Perplexity's Comet AI browser now free; Max users get new 'background assistant'" (secondary): https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/02/perplexitys-comet-ai-browser-now-free-max-users-get-new-background-assistant/ (July launch at $200/mo Max; Comet Plus $5/mo).
• TechCrunch — "Perplexity brings its AI browser Comet to Android" (secondary): https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/20/perplexity-brings-its-ai-browser-comet-to-android/ (Android, November 2025).
• Perplexity — "Comet is Now Available on iOS" (primary): https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/meet-comet-for-ios (iOS, March 2026).
• OpenAI — "Introducing ChatGPT Atlas" (primary): https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-atlas/ (Atlas launch, October 2025; agent mode).
• OpenAI Help Centre — "Evolving Atlas into ChatGPT for browser-based agentic work" (primary; Atlas deprecation announced 9 July 2026, browser stopped working 9 August 2026): https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001371-evolving-atlas-into-chatgpt-for-browser-based-agentic-work · Wayback — read 20 September 2026.
• Brave — "Agentic Browser Security: Indirect Prompt Injection in Perplexity Comet": https://brave.com/blog/comet-prompt-injection/ (prompt-injection vulnerability).
• LayerX — "CometJacking: how one click can turn Perplexity's Comet AI browser against you": https://layerxsecurity.com/blog/cometjacking-how-one-click-can-turn-perplexitys-comet-ai-browser-against-you/ (one-click data-exfiltration vector).

Wayback Machine snapshots queued.