Perplexity

Perplexity is a search engine that answers in prose with numbered citations instead of ten blue links. Comet is its browser, Chromium with the assistant built into the sidebar, so it can read the page you are on and act on it.

How I use it

For the check before I trust a number. When a model in another window gives me a statistic, a price or a date, I ask Perplexity the same question and read the sources it cites. Often the answer is the same; sometimes the sources show that the number came from one blog post repeated five times, and that is worth knowing. The follow-up questions are where it earns its keep: narrowing a vague question to the one I meant takes three short turns.

Comet I use in bursts. When I am on a long page, a pricing table or a documentation site, asking the sidebar "what does this page say about X" is faster than reading, and it quotes the page rather than guessing. It can also fill forms and click through flows, which is impressive for ten minutes and then I go back to my normal browser, because Comet is still a second browser with its own tabs, passwords and quirks.

What surprised me is how reliable the citations are; I have rarely clicked one and found something else. What annoys me is the tone. The answer sounds equally sure whether the sources agree or not, so you still have to read them. And the plans shift: which models you get, how many deep searches, what Comet includes, all of it has changed more than once in a year, and the help pages lag.

Who it is for

Researchers, writers, anyone who looks things up for a living and has been burned by a confident wrong answer. Start on the free tier; Pro is worth it when you hit the daily limit. Skip Comet for now unless you enjoy trying browsers; the assistant is the interesting part, and that already lives on the website.