The Browser Is Becoming Your Personal Assistant: Here Are the Best Alternatives to Chrome and Safari

Key points

• Perplexity launched its AI browser, Comet, in July 2025, but access currently requires a $200-per-month plan.
• Opera released its AI browser Neon in May 2025 for $19.90 per month, and it can keep working even when your internet is off.
• OpenAI launched an AI browser called Atlas in October 2025 and shut it down by July 2026.
• Privacy-first browser Brave rewards users with cryptocurrency for choosing to view ads.
• Ladybird, led by GitHub co-founder and former CEO Chris Wanstrath, is building a new browser from scratch, with a Linux and macOS alpha planned for this year.

Your browser used to show you web pages. Now it wants to run your life.

TechCrunch AI recently mapped the new wave of browsers competing with Google Chrome and Apple Safari. Every serious new entrant is betting that an AI agent, software that completes multi-step tasks on its own, will soon feel more useful than a search bar. Some can book calendar invites, fill forms, summarise emails, all without you lifting a finger beyond asking.

Convenience has a price, sometimes literally.

The AI contenders

Perplexity's Comet is the flashiest entry. Launched in July 2025, it summarises emails, browses pages, and sends calendar invites on your behalf. The catch: it sits behind a $200-per-month paywall. A free waitlist exists if you're curious but not flush.

The Browser Company's Dia is free to download. It looks like Chrome but adds an AI chat tool that can see every site you've visited and every account you're logged into. That depth is what makes it powerful, and what makes the privacy policy worth reading carefully.

Opera's Neon, released in May 2025 at $19.90 per month, is the only one so far that keeps working while you're offline. A genuinely useful trick for travellers.

OpenAI's Atlas lasted less than a year. Launched in October 2025 and killed by July 2026, its agentic features were folded into the ChatGPT desktop app instead. We noted the EU pressure on AI browser distribution in our 16 July story on Brussels' ruling against Google, which shows how fast this landscape is shifting.

Aside, backed by startup accelerator Y Combinator, takes the boldest approach. It asks you to hand over your passwords, browsing history, and full browser context so it can automate tasks across Gmail, Slack, and even banking platforms.

Jatter, free with an optional $10-per-month subscription, lets you ask questions about any web page and takes notes it can later summarise. It runs on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android.

## Should ordinary users switch?

Not yet, for most people. These browsers are genuinely impressive demos, but the trade-off is real: the more an app can do for you, the more it needs to know about you. If you're handing passwords and full browsing history to an AI agent, know who stores that data and for how long. Our earlier piece on how a single email can silently alter an AI agent's memory is worth reading before you do.

## The privacy alternatives

Brave blocks ads and trackers by default and pays you a share of ad revenue in its own cryptocurrency, Basic Attention Token, if you opt into viewing ads. DuckDuckGo, the search engine that became a browser, recently added a chatbot and a stronger scam detector covering fake crypto exchanges and fraudulent shopping sites.

Ladybird is the long shot worth watching. It won't borrow code from Google's Chromium project, the shared foundation most browsers quietly rely on. An early alpha for Linux and macOS is expected this year. That's rare: building a browser from scratch almost never happens.

For most people, Brave or DuckDuckGo are a meaningful upgrade over Chrome with almost no learning curve. If you want AI assistance, Dia or Neon are worth a trial. Just read what you're agreeing to first.