Perplexity's Comet AI Browser Arrives on iOS and Android This Month
Perplexity has brought its Comet AI browser to iOS and Android after a waitlist the company says exceeded one million sign-ups. The mobile version can summarize pages and complete tasks such as purchases, rolling out first to Comet Plus subscribers at five dollars a month, with access for free users promised over the coming weeks.
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What shipped, and who gets it first
Perplexity's Comet browser left the desktop on Thursday: the company announced that Comet is now available on iOS and Android, capping a waitlist it says passed one million sign-ups. The rollout is staged. Comet Plus subscribers, the five-dollar-a-month tier, get the mobile browser first, and Perplexity says free users will receive access over the coming weeks.
On mobile, Comet works like its desktop sibling: the built-in assistant can summarize whatever page you are on, answer questions about it, and carry out tasks, with shopping among the first use cases Perplexity demonstrated. The browser is built around the idea that the assistant reads and acts on content for you rather than sending you to a list of links.
Why the mobile version matters more
Desktop AI browsers are a convenience; mobile AI browsers are a habit. Most browsing sessions, and nearly all impulse purchases and quick lookups, happen on phones, and whoever owns the mobile assistant layer owns the moment before the query happens. Google understands this, which is why it shut down Assistant on Android this month and made Gemini the default, with AI Mode wired into Search itself.
Comet on mobile puts a second AI agent in that position for the millions of people who already use Perplexity as a search replacement. The staged rollout through a paid tier also echoes the industry playbook: subscriber-first access buys stability time before the free wave arrives.
The publisher money behind the browser
Comet's expansion lands one week after Perplexity signed its biggest publisher deal, a multi-year license for Reuters' decades-deep archive with mandatory citations. That deal is not incidental to this launch. An assistant that summarizes and acts on news content needs licensed material to summarize, and the paid tier that gates this rollout is where the company's publisher and subscriber economics meet. The sequence matters: publishers get paid for their archives, the assistant gets material it is allowed to quote, and users get answers with citations pointing back to the source. Whether that loop produces sustainable revenue for either side is the open question, but the structure is more defensible than scraping and apologizing later.
Before you install it on your phone
For readers, the practical question is what the assistant does with the pages you visit. An agentic browser that can complete purchases is handling authenticated sessions and payment contexts on your phone, which deserves the same scrutiny as any app that touches your accounts. Before trusting it with a checkout, check what the assistant sends when it summarizes a page, whether task history is stored and for how long, and what its purchase confirmations actually look like.
It is also worth deciding deliberately which assistant owns your default browser slot. A browser that reads and acts on every page is a bigger commitment than a chat app you open occasionally, and the choice between competing assistants is reversible only until muscle memory and saved sessions set in. Take the free rollout period to test behavior, read the privacy documentation, and make the switch on purpose rather than by accident.