Why Perplexity Comet failed

In October 2025, Comet was the browser everyone was waiting on. A year later the agent lives in Claude Desktop, ChatGPT Work, and Grok Bot.

Perplexity Comet failed the job it was hired for: the browser you switch to, the one that searches, clicks, and finishes the task. The app is still installed. Ask a page a question and Comet can still answer. Hand it the afternoon of clicking, and you are in a metered product called Computer, while Claude Desktop, ChatGPT Work, and Grok Bot each ship a browser inside an agent you already open.

What happened to ChatGPT Atlas is the other browser from that season, and it is already off. Comet's version of the ending is quieter.

The year everyone wanted a browser

Comet launched on 9 July 2025. Perplexity's post, "Browse at the speed of thought," gave it to Max subscribers first, with a waitlist for everyone else. Reuters covered it as a challenge to Chrome. The pitch was agentic browsing: the browser thinks, acts, and decides, on the internet where people already work.

Source: Introducing Comet, Perplexity.

The waitlist did the marketing. Aravind Srinivas said it stood at 460,000 on launch day and then grew to millions. On 2 October 2025 Perplexity dropped the paywall and the waitlist and shipped Comet free worldwide, with rate limits on the free tier. Their own post called it "the most sought-after AI product of the year."

For the next year that story held the category, with ChatGPT Atlas beside it. Atlas shut down on 9 August 2026. Comet was the one that still looked like it might become a default.

What "failed" looks like when the app is still installed

Comet did not get an end date. It got a smaller job.

Through the summer of 2026, Perplexity's energy went to Computer, the assistant that does multi-step work across the web, files, and connectors. A 15 September 2026 report found the old "Control browser" action, the feature Comet had sold, sitting under Computer and gated on credits. Perplexity's current help center draws the line in the product: Ask searches, and Comet Assistant in Search mode, do not use credits. Work mode hands the request to Computer, and Computer spends credits once any included weekly usage on a paid Pro plan is gone.

That is a coherent price. Driving a real page, with retries, is compute. A summary in the address bar is cheap enough to bundle. The coherent price is also the tell. The thing that justified a new browser is now a meter inside a different product. A browser you open every morning, whose main trick costs extra, is a weak candidate for the default.

The court fight was the product problem

The other cost showed up in court. On 9 March 2026 a federal judge in California granted Amazon a preliminary injunction blocking Comet's agents from Amazon's signed-in systems. Amazon had sued over an assistant that shopped while signed in as the user. CNBC reported the short version: the shopping agent was the feature, and a major site wanted it stopped.

On 4 August 2026 the Ninth Circuit vacated that injunction. The opinion says the user accesses Amazon, with the assistant as help. In September the court declined to rehear the case. Comet's agent can shop Amazon again. The appeal win left the browser where the product team had already moved it: beside Computer, under a credit meter, while the clicking people wanted had other homes.

The replacements are already on the desktop

The work Comet advertised now shows up in three places that are happy to leave your default browser installed.

Claude Desktop. On 26 August 2026 Anthropic gave Cowork a browser built into the desktop app. A task that needs a site opens that browser in the side panel. Claude reads, clicks, types, and fills forms. It is Claude's browser, separate from your tabs, unless you import logins site by site or switch the preferred browser to Claude in Chrome. Computer use, in beta on Pro and Max, clicks the desktop itself when a connector and a browser are the wrong tool. The desktop app has to be open for the built-in browser to run.

Source: Claude gets its own browser in Cowork, Anthropic.

ChatGPT Work. After Atlas shut down, OpenAI put the browser inside the ChatGPT desktop app. Work can use multiple tabs, downloads, and signed-in sites, on Mac and Windows, and it can drive local files with permission. The Chrome extension covers the profile you already have. The full handoff is in why ChatGPT Atlas failed.

Grok Bot. Grok Bot's computer is the product. Each Bot on your account shares one persistent cloud computer with a browser, files, and a terminal. Sessions survive from one task to the next. Closing the laptop does not stop the work. When a site wants a person, the Bot can hand you the screen.

Source: Grok Bot 101, SpaceXAI.

Claude Desktop is the agent on your machine, with a browser beside the task. ChatGPT Work is that shape inside the app that absorbed Atlas. Grok Bot is the hosted computer, shared by the Bots on your account. Comet can still be the address bar that answers a question. The separate AI browser is a weak bet for where the clicking settles.

The review can stay on the request

A year of hype proved that the page should be in the prompt. It also proved the page does not have to be a new browser. For a code change, the page is the pull request.

ThinkReview runs on that request in GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, and Bitbucket. Choose the model in Model selection. The comment stays on the diff, which is the tab you already meant to open.

The 2025 launch record is Perplexity's introducing Comet and free worldwide posts, plus Srinivas's 2 October 2025 note on the waitlist. Credits are from Perplexity's help center. The Amazon order and the appeal are CNBC and the Ninth Circuit opinion. Install ThinkReview.