For decades, web browsing has worked exactly the same way: you type a URL or a search query, the page loads, you click, read, scroll, and repeat. It’s passive by design. You do the thinking; the browser renders pixels.
That’s changing fast. A new category called agentic browsing is quietly rewriting the relationship between humans and the web, and it’s moving from concept to product faster than most people expected.
What Is Agentic Browsing?
An agentic browser is one where an AI agent doesn’t just assist you, it acts on your behalf. Instead of surfacing information and waiting for you to decide what to do with it, the agent navigates websites, fills forms, clicks buttons, compares options, and completes multi-step tasks autonomously.
Think of the difference this way: a traditional AI assistant integrated into your browser is like having a very fast research intern who reads pages and summarizes them for you. An agentic browser is more like giving that intern a keyboard and saying, “Book me a flight to Milan for next Tuesday. Economy, aisle seat. Don’t spend more than €300.”
The agent breaks the goal into steps, navigates the web, handles the inputs, checks the results, and reports back when done. You might watch it work, or you might just get a confirmation when it’s finished.
This shift is significant. Search engines changed how we find information. Agentic browsers could change how we interact with the web entirely.
Perplexity Comet: Browsing at the Speed of Thought
Perplexity, the search AI that built its reputation on giving direct answers rather than a list of links, launched Comet in July 2025. Desktop first, then Android in November. Now, as of March 2026, it’s landing on iOS.
Comet is built around a core philosophy: search should ground AI decisions in real, current web data, especially as those decisions become more consequential. Their argument is that accuracy compounds in importance when the AI isn’t just answering questions, it’s booking appointments and sending emails.
The core feature is the Comet Agent sidebar, which monitors context across your browsing session and suggests one-tap workflows. It can auto-fill forms, summarize any page in context, answer follow-up questions without losing track of what you were doing, and execute multi-step actions like purchasing or scheduling without requiring you to switch between tabs.
What sets Comet apart from a basic AI-integrated browser is the emphasis on retrieval-augmented generation: every answer and action is grounded in live web data, not just a frozen training snapshot. This matters when you’re asking the agent to book a flight or verify a product is still in stock.
There have been challenges. Independent security researchers from Brave and Guardio flagged prompt-injection vulnerabilities in mid-2025, where a malicious webpage could hijack Comet’s summarization pipeline and insert unauthorized instructions. Perplexity patched the issues within weeks, adding input filtering and hardened parsing routines. The iOS version ships with those fixes included, plus Apple’s sandboxing layer adds another security barrier.
The iOS release, arriving around March 11, 2026, completes Perplexity’s cross-platform push. It includes upgraded voice mode for hands-free agentic browsing, which positions it squarely for commuter use cases where you can’t stare at a screen but still want tasks handled.
Norton Neo: Agentic Without Sacrificing Privacy
Not every company entering this space is a startup or a pure AI play. Norton, one of the most recognized names in consumer security, launched Neo in May 2025, and it comes with a different set of priorities.
Neo is built on a Chromium base, which means existing Chrome extensions work. But the design philosophy differs significantly from competitors. Where Comet and others emphasize how much the AI can do for you, Neo focuses on what the AI does with your data while it’s doing it.
The key differentiators:
- Local data storage. Your chat history and browsing context stay on your device, not sent to a remote server for processing or model training.
- User-controlled memory. You decide what Neo remembers between sessions. You can disable memory entirely if you prefer each session to start clean.
- Unified Search and Chat. Instead of a separate sidebar or interface, Neo turns the address bar into a conversational entry point. You search and chat from the same place, and the AI understands context from the current page.
- Smart Tab Management. Neo organizes open tabs automatically by theme or task, which sounds minor until you’re juggling 23 tabs across three different projects.
Norton’s pitch is essentially: the companies offering the most powerful agentic features are also the ones asking you to trust them with the most data. Neo offers a middle path, capable enough to handle real tasks, designed to keep your information local and protected.
It’s not as aggressively agentic as Comet or ChatGPT Atlas. It won’t autonomously complete a multi-step shopping workflow unprompted. But for users who want AI-assisted browsing without handing their behavioral data to another large AI company, Neo fills a gap that wasn’t being addressed.
The Bigger Picture: Where Agentic Browsing Is Headed
Perplexity and Norton are two points on a much larger map. The agentic browser space in 2026 also includes ChatGPT Atlas (OpenAI’s Chromium-based browser with deep Agent Mode integration), Dia (from the Browser Company), Fellou (which calls itself “the world’s first self-driving browser”), and others either in early access or launching soon.
The pattern emerging across all of them is roughly the same: AI that doesn’t just answer questions, but understands goals, breaks them into actions, executes across multiple websites, and returns results.
What makes this more than a feature update is what it implies about the future of how humans interact with software. If a browser can reliably complete multi-step tasks, the interface layer between you and the web starts to matter less. You might not need to visit a website at all, just tell the agent what you need and let it handle the navigation.
This creates new problems too. Prompt injection (where hostile content on a webpage hijacks the agent’s instructions) is a real attack vector that the industry is still figuring out. Privacy questions multiply when an agent is browsing on your behalf, potentially accessing authenticated accounts, form data, and purchase flows. Liability questions arise when the agent makes a decision you didn’t explicitly authorize.
The technical problems are solvable. The harder question is trust. Who do you trust to act on your behalf, with what data, under what constraints? Different companies are giving very different answers to that question.
Comet bets on accuracy and breadth of action. Neo bets on privacy and user control. Atlas bets on deep integration with a model you already use. Fellou bets on full autonomy. The browser wars have always been about more than rendering engines, and this new round is no different.
What This Means Right Now
If you’re curious about agentic browsing today, both Comet and Neo are publicly available and worth testing. Comet is stronger if you’re already in the Perplexity ecosystem and want maximum capability. Neo is the better choice if you’re privacy-sensitive and want something that works within Norton’s security framework.
Neither replaces your current browser immediately. Both are in active development. But the direction of travel is clear: the browser as a passive renderer is becoming the browser as an active participant in your workflow.
That shift is already underway. The question is just how fast you want to move with it.
Sources: Perplexity Comet | Norton Neo | AI CERTs: Perplexity iOS Launch | KDnuggets: Best Agentic Browsers 2026