Perplexity Comet vs. OpenAI Operator: which browser agent should you actually use?

Two of the most-anticipated agent products of 2025 shipped at roughly the same time, into the same category, with very different theories of how a browser agent should work. Here’s how to choose.

The TL;DR

• Pick Comet if you want a daily-driver browser with research baked in. The whole point is that it lives in your browser session, with your logged-in tabs.
• Pick Operator if you want a remote agent doing transactional work in the background. It’s built more like a service than a sidekick.

Where they’re actually different

Where the agent runs. Comet is a Chromium fork on your machine. Operator runs a remote browser in OpenAI’s infrastructure and streams it to you. That single design decision drives most of the day-to-day differences.

Cookie and session sharing. Comet inherits everything you’re already logged into. Operator needs you to authenticate inside its remote browser, which is awkward and limits what it can practically do.

Reliability on long tasks. Operator’s CUA loop is more conservative — more checkpoints, more “are you sure?” pauses. Comet is more willing to push through, which is faster when it works and worse when it doesn’t.

Pricing. Comet is a Pro-tier feature ($20/mo for Perplexity Pro). Operator currently requires ChatGPT Pro at $200/mo. That’s a 10x gap for what is, at this stage, a roughly comparable capability.

Where both still break

Neither handles long, branching tasks gracefully. Both are stronger on transactional flows (book a flight, fill a form) than on open-ended ones (research and synthesize). Both will hallucinate clicking on the wrong element when a UI changes.

The bet you’re making

Choosing Comet is a bet that the future of browser agents is in your browser. Choosing Operator is a bet that the future is a service in the cloud. We think the first will dominate consumer use cases and the second will dominate enterprise — but it’s early.