Perplexity and Comet: what it does and what it costs
In short
Perplexity's answer engine cites and links the pages it reads, and its Comet browser, a free download for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android, runs an assistant that browses and shops in the user's own tabs. PerplexityBot follows robots.txt, while Perplexity-User generally ignores it because a person asked for the page.
At a glance
- What it is
- Perplexity's answer engine cites and links the pages it reads, and its Comet browser runs an assistant that browses, shops and fills forms in the user's own session.
- Type
- Agent surface
- Operator
- Perplexity
- Homepage
- perplexity.ai
- Homepage check
- HTTP 200 on 5 November 2026
- Last read
- 5 November 2026
What it does for your business
- Read 5 Nov 2026
Perplexity's Comet page, read 5 Nov 2026, says the browser is available for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android.
- Read 5 Nov 2026
Perplexity's Comet page lists shopping among the assistant's tasks, with the sample request "Buy a high quality, comfortable yet cheap office chair".
- 25 Aug 2025
Perplexity announced Comet Plus on 25 August 2025 as a 5 US dollar standalone subscription, included in its Pro and Max plans.
- 25 Aug 2025
Perplexity says Comet Plus pays participating publishers on three kinds of traffic: human visits, search citations and agent actions, keeping a small portion for compute costs.
Detail for your web team
| Read | Fact | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Nov 2026 | Perplexity's crawler docs say PerplexityBot surfaces and links websites in Perplexity search results and is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models. | Perplexity Crawlers (Perplexity docs) |
| 5 Nov 2026 | Perplexity's crawler docs recommend allowing PerplexityBot in robots.txt and permitting its published IP ranges for a site to appear in search results. | Perplexity Crawlers (Perplexity docs) |
| 5 Nov 2026 | Perplexity's crawler docs say Perplexity-User fetches pages when a user asks a question and "generally ignores robots.txt rules" because a user requested the fetch. | Perplexity Crawlers (Perplexity docs) |
| 5 Nov 2026 | Perplexity's crawler docs say robots.txt changes can take up to 24 hours to take effect, and give firewall rules for Cloudflare WAF and AWS WAF built on the published IP lists. | Perplexity Crawlers (Perplexity docs) |
Products and plans
| Product | What it is | Price | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity search | Answer engine that cites and links the pages it reads. | No price recorded | 5 Nov 2026 | None |
| Comet | A browser with an assistant that acts in the user's tabs. | Free download, 0 USD. Download offered for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. | 5 Nov 2026 | Comet Browser: a Personal AI Assistant (Perplexity) |
| Comet Plus | A reader subscription whose revenue is shared with participating publishers. | Subscription, from 5 USD. Standalone price as announced 25 Aug 2025; included in Pro and Max. | 25 Aug 2025 | Introducing Comet Plus (Perplexity blog) |
Standards it states
| Standard | Status | What the page says | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI bot rules in robots.txt | Partial | PerplexityBot follows robots.txt; Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt because a user requested the fetch. | Perplexity Crawlers (Perplexity docs) |
The site's own checks
| Check | Domain | Result | Date | Method | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare isitagentready.com keyless scan | perplexity.ai | 27 of 100, L1 Basic Web Presence, 4 of 15 counted checks passed | Run 5 Nov 2026 | POST https://isitagentready.com/api/scan, default All Checks profile, score = passed / counted x 100 | Source |
| Ora cached score | perplexity.ai | 68 of 100, grade C | Scanned 23 Oct 2026, read 5 Nov 2026 | GET /api/score (cached) | Source |
What it does not do
- Perplexity says PerplexityBot does not collect content to train AI foundation models.
- A robots.txt rule does not reliably keep Perplexity-User out; Perplexity points to firewall rules on its published IP list instead.
Related pages on this site
Sources
- Comet Browser: a Personal AI Assistant (Perplexity) (perplexity.ai/comet), read 5 Nov 2026.
- Introducing Comet Plus (Perplexity blog) (perplexity.ai/hub/blog/introducing-comet-plus), read 5 Nov 2026.
- Perplexity Crawlers (Perplexity docs) (docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers), read 5 Nov 2026.
- Is Your Site Agent-Ready? (Cloudflare, isitagentready.com) (isitagentready.com), read 5 Nov 2026.
- Ora cached score for perplexity.ai (ora.ai/api/score/perplexity.ai), read 5 Nov 2026.
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