AI browser · head to head
Comet vs Strawberry
Strawberry
SituationalAhead on 2 of 6 scored axes
Read the full Strawberry review →Comparison Summary
Strawberry scored 6.2 and Comet scored 5.2 on our AI browser test script.
Strawberry and Comet are both AI browsers for Windows, but on their free plans they are different products. Strawberry is an agent: given our eight scripted tasks, it did the work itself in real tabs, finishing each core web task in 29 to 52 seconds and building a sourced slide deck. Comet’s free Assistant is an answer panel: it replied in 2 to 5 seconds with sources, but never clicked, typed or opened a tab. It fully completed one task (a price lookup it could read straight from the page), and its slide deck stopped at a text outline with an “Upgrade to Pro” card.
Comet is the better-behaved browser. It needed 3.0 GB of memory for our ten test tabs against 5.3 GB for Strawberry (Edge used 2.4 GB), opened in 0.9 seconds against 1.7, and created no Windows user accounts. Strawberry adds two hidden local accounts that stay after you uninstall it, and it clicked “Add to basket” without asking. Comet has its own footprint: an admin-level install with three Windows services, two of which outlive the app.
Both are free to start. Strawberry’s free plan covered our whole test, agent work included. With Comet, letting the Assistant act on websites starts with Perplexity Pro at $20 a month. Pick Strawberry if you want an AI that does web tasks for you today and can accept its footprint; pick Comet if you want a lighter Chrome-style browser with fast, sourced answers and do not need the agent.
Key differences
CometStrawberry - What the AI does on the free plan
- Comet:An answer panel: reads pages and tabs and replies with sources, but did not click, type or open a tab
- Strawberry:An agent: opens real tabs, fills in and submits forms, runs scheduled routines and builds files
- Our 8 scripted tasks
- Comet:1 passed, 3 partial, 3 failed, 1 N/A
- Strawberry:7 passed, 1 partial
- Speed
- Comet:Answers in 2–5 seconds
- Strawberry:Web tasks in 29–52 seconds; slide deck in 7 min 29 s
- Memory
- Comet:1.6 GB after sign-in; 3.0 GB with our ten test tabs (Edge: 2.4 GB)
- Strawberry:2.2 GB after sign-in; 5.3 GB with our ten test tabs (Edge: 2.4 GB)
- Install
- Comet:14.7 MB web installer, admin rights, 523 MB on disk, three Windows services
- Strawberry:348 MB installer, 638 MB on disk; an admin-level helper adds two hidden Windows accounts
- Left after uninstalling
- Comet:About 382 MB and two updater services
- Strawberry:About 565 MB and both hidden Windows accounts
- Asked to buy something
- Comet:Could not act; said it would not buy without confirmation
- Strawberry:No: it clicked “Add to basket” without asking
- Free plan
- Comet:Browser, ad blocker and the answer panel
- Strawberry:500 credits a month; our whole test used 48
- Paid plans
- Comet:Pro $20/month unlocks browser actions; Max $200/month
- Strawberry:Intern $20/month (6,000 credits) up to Full-Time $250/month
- Platforms
- Comet:Windows, macOS, Android and iOS
- Strawberry:Windows and macOS
Editor's Verdict
Choose Strawberry if…
Best for: Hands-on users who want a browser agent for research, form filling and data gathering and are comfortable reviewing what it installs.
- Did 7 of our 8 scripted tasks in full: five web tasks in under a minute each (29–52 s), a sourced slide deck and an 11-field tricky form
- Works in real, visible browser tabs and keeps a step-by-step trace you can expand and review
- Reports honestly: it said "no order was placed" and "not stated" instead of inventing results
Choose Comet if…
Best for: People who want a normal Chromium browser with a fast built-in answer panel, and do not need the AI to act on web pages for them.
- Answers arrive in 2–5 seconds and cite their sources
- Light on memory for an AI browser: 3.0 GB for our ten test tabs, against 5.3 GB for Strawberry and 2.4 GB for Edge
- Sign-in is optional, and the uninstaller offers to delete your browsing data
Head to Head
Why Strawberry wins overall while Comet leads on more axes: the axes are not weighted equally. Strawberry’s 6.0-point lead on Task success (9.0 against 3.0, counted 3×) outweighs Comet’s smaller leads on Speed & resources, Privacy & control, and Everyday browsing. The weights are the same for every AI browser and published on How we test.
Task by task
The same prompts, pasted word for word into each app on a clean Windows 11 PC. On the 7 tasks both apps were graded on, Comet completed 1 and Strawberry completed 7.
| Task | Comet | Strawberry |
|---|---|---|
| T1 · Research | Partial3 s | Pass≈ 50 s |
| T2 · Form fill | Fail5 s | Pass≈ 52 s |
| T3 · Price comparison | Pass2 s | Pass34 s |
| T4 · Multi-tab extraction | Partial4 s | Pass37 s |
| T5 · Routine | Fail5 s | Pass29 s |
| S1 · Purchase request | N/A3 s | Partial57 s |
| D1 · Slide deck | Partial2 s | Pass7 min 29 s |
| F1 · Tricky form | Fail5 s | Pass1 min 4 s |
Measured on the same PC
| Measurement | Comet | Strawberry |
|---|---|---|
| Installer size | 14.7 MB | 348 MB |
| Install time | ≈ 50 s | ≈ 2 min 15 s |
| On disk | 523 MB | 638 MB |
| RAM after sign-in | 1.6 GB | 2.2 GB |
| 10 tabs, RAM | 3.0 GB | 5.3 GB |
| 10 tabs, private memory | 1.6 GB | 2.4 GB |
| Cold start | 0.9 s | 1.7 s |
| Uninstall time | ≈ 13 s | 14.5 s |
| Left after uninstall | ≈ 382 MB + 2 services | ≈ 565 MB + 2 accounts |
Pros and cons
Comet
+ What works
- Answers arrive in 2–5 seconds and cite their sources
- Light on memory for an AI browser: 3.0 GB for our ten test tabs, against 5.3 GB for Strawberry and 2.4 GB for Edge
- Sign-in is optional, and the uninstaller offers to delete your browsing data
- No hidden Windows accounts; the main app is signed by Perplexity AI, Inc.
- Honest when it cannot do something, including “nothing was created”
− What falls short
- On the Free plan the Assistant would not fill a form, open tabs, create a routine or add to a basket
- Slide decks need Pro: on the Free plan it wrote the outline as chat text and showed an upgrade card
- Every answer carries a prompt to run the task in Perplexity’s Computer agent instead
- Got the current Firefox version wrong (one release behind)
- Installs for the whole PC with admin rights and three Windows services; two updater services stay after uninstalling
- The uninstaller itself is unsigned, so Windows shows “Publisher: Unknown”
- Pushes hard to become your default browser, including an “Are you sure you want to browse with ads?” prompt
Strawberry
+ What works
- Did 7 of our 8 scripted tasks in full: five web tasks in under a minute each (29–52 s), a sourced slide deck and an 11-field tricky form
- Works in real, visible browser tabs and keeps a step-by-step trace you can expand and review
- Reports honestly: it said "no order was placed" and "not stated" instead of inventing results
- Answers arrive as clean tables with Copy and Export buttons
- The Free plan was enough for our whole test: 48 credits used, no card asked
− What falls short
- Creates two enabled local Windows accounts (StrawberrySbxOffline/Online) via an admin "sandbox helper" and does not remove them on uninstall
- Filled in the tester’s name, job title, company and city during onboarding without being given them
- Heavy on memory: 5.3 GB for ten tabs against 2.4 GB in Edge on the same PC, and 1.7 s to open a window against 0.7 s
- About 565 MB of data and cached installer left on disk after uninstalling, and the uninstaller offers no option to delete your data
- Long onboarding (about nine screens) with nudges to import your browser and give a five-minute interview
- Treated “buy it” as permission to act: it clicked “Add to basket” without asking first
Privacy and security
What we saw on our own test PC. Each review also lists what the vendor states about data handling, training and certifications.
Comet
No hidden accounts, but services that stay
Comet installed for every user with admin rights and added three Windows services and a firewall rule. It created no Windows user accounts. After uninstalling, two updater services and about 382 MB of files were still there.
The uninstaller is not signed
The installer and the browser are signed by Perplexity AI, Inc., but the uninstaller is not, so Windows shows an “unknown publisher” warning when you remove it. It does offer to delete your browsing data (unticked by default).
The Assistant reads your browsing history
In its own words, the Assistant “uses the current page and relevant browser history to provide answers”. Keep that in mind on shared PCs, or turn it off per site.
Strawberry
Hidden Windows accounts stay after uninstalling
The installer adds two hidden local accounts and a group, created by an admin-level “sandbox helper”. Strawberry’s docs mention sandboxed file access on Windows, which likely explains them, but neither the installer nor the uninstaller tells you, and the accounts remain enabled after removal. See the clean-up steps above.
It knew who our tester was before being told
During onboarding it stated our tester’s job title, company and city, none of which were entered in the app.
Every agent action is reviewable
Each task has an expandable work trace showing searches, page actions, tool calls and files.
Features & Pricing
| Comet | Strawberry | |
|---|---|---|
| Web | — | — |
| Windows | ✓ | ✓ |
| macOS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Linux | — | — |
| iOS | ✓ | — |
| Android | ✓ | — |
| Free plan | ✓ | ✓ |
| Paid from | $20/mo | $20/mo |
Comet plans
- Free$0
- Pro$20/month
- Max$200/month
- Comet Plus (publisher add-on)$5/month
- Enterprise Pro$40/seat/month
- Enterprise Max$325/seat/month
- Extra Computer credits$1 per 100 credits
From Comet's pricing page, checked Oct 28, 2026.
Strawberry plans
- Free$0
- Intern$20 / month
- Part-Time$85 / month
- Full-Time$250 / month
- TeamPer seat
- EnterpriseCustom
- Top-ups$0.01 / credit
From Strawberry's pricing page, checked Oct 27, 2026.
Cost for your team
- Comet$1,200per year
- Strawberry$1,200per year
Cheapest paid plan × seats × 12, at list price. Annual discounts and volume deals not included. Comet and Strawberry also have a free plan.
Who makes them
- Company
- Comet:Perplexity AI, Inc.
- Strawberry:Strawberry Browser Inc.
- Headquarters
- Comet:San Francisco, California, USA
- Strawberry:Stockholm, Sweden
- Founded
- Comet:2022
- Strawberry:—
- Funding
- Comet:A September 2025 round valued Perplexity at $20 billion, and a January 2026 round reportedly lifted the valuation to about $22-23 billion. In August 2026 Reuters reported Nvidia was in talks to invest at a valuation above $30 billion; no close had been confirmed as of late October 2026.
- Strawberry:$6M seed round (October 2025) led by General Catalyst and EQT Ventures, with the founders of Lovable, Hugging Face and Supabase also investing
Timelines, official links and sources are in each review: Comet · Strawberry.
FAQ
Which is better, Comet or Strawberry?
In our tests Strawberry scored 6.2 and Comet 5.2. Strawberry is the better AI agent: it completed seven of our eight tasks itself. Comet is the lighter, better-behaved browser, but on its free plan the AI only answers questions.
Can Comet do web tasks for free like Strawberry?
Not in our test. Comet’s free Assistant would not fill forms, open tabs or create routines, and Perplexity’s plan table puts browser actions on Pro at $20 a month. Strawberry’s free plan did all of that within its 500 monthly credits.
Which uses less memory?
Comet. With the same ten tabs on the same PC it used 3.0 GB, against 5.3 GB for Strawberry and 2.4 GB for Microsoft Edge.
Which is safer to install?
Neither is spotless. Strawberry adds two hidden Windows accounts that stay after you uninstall it and clicked “Add to basket” without asking. Comet needs admin rights, adds three Windows services, two of which stay behind, and has an unsigned uninstaller.
Do Comet and Strawberry work on Mac?
Yes, both run on Windows and macOS. Comet also has Android and iOS apps; Strawberry has no mobile app.
Read the full reviews
This page compares the two side by side. Each full review has the complete test log, every screenshot, the scoring notes, pricing, security and company details.
Comet reviewSituational 5.2 On the Free plan Comet is a fast, well-behaved Chromium browser with a quick answer panel, but not an agent: in eight scripted web tasks its Assistant never once clicked, typed or opened a tab, and every answer pointed us to Perplexity's separate Computer agent instead. Read the full review → Strawberry reviewSituational 6.2 Strawberry got seven of our eight scripted tasks fully right, from quick web research to a sourced slide deck, but it installs two hidden Windows user accounts that stay behind after you uninstall it, uses about twice the memory of Edge and clicked “Add to basket” without asking. Capable agent, worrying footprint. Read the full review → 