Web browsers: the AI browser race — Brave Leo, Perplexity Comet, Opera, Edge Copilot, Chrome Gemini, Dia, Strawberry, Sigma — and the AI labs' own apps
Browsers have no NAICS code of their own; the companies file as software publishers (NAICS 513210) or web search portals (519290). The 2025–26 'AI browser' wave split two ways. Incumbents bolted assistants and agents onto browsers people already use: Chrome with Gemini 'auto browse', Edge with Copilot, Brave with Leo, Opera with Aria, Firefox with its Smart Window. New AI-native browsers tried to start over: Perplexity Comet, The Browser Company's Dia (its older Arc closes 22 Dec 2026), Opera Neon, Strawberry, Sigma, and OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas, which OpenAI shut down in August 2026 after nine months. Meanwhile the AI labs ship their own apps that browse without being browsers — Claude in Chrome, the ChatGPT desktop app — and prune the ones that don't stick, as OpenAI did with the Sora app. Chrome still holds about 69% of worldwide use. The independents with the largest published audiences are Opera (288M monthly users) and Brave (122.55M in July 2026, reported 130.77M in October), and both ship their AI free.
27 sources · 14 tier A · 25 tier B · 1 tier C · prepared 2026-11-14
01
What an 'AI browser' is, in industry terms
There is no browser industry code. The products are given away and paid for by search deals, ads, subscriptions or a parent's strategy, so the companies file under software publishing or web search. 'AI browser' covers two different things: an assistant that reads the page you are on, and an agent that clicks, types and buys on your behalf. Every leader below now ships the first; the second is still a preview almost everywhere.
| Browser publishers Opera files as a software company; Google's browser sits inside a search-and-ads business; Brave earns from search ads and its own ad network. None reports browser revenue as a line of its own. |
NAICS 513210 (software publishers) / 519290 (web search portals)A |
| Assistant built into an existing browser Distribution comes free with the install base. This is where nearly all actual AI-browser use happens. |
Chrome (Gemini), Edge (Copilot), Brave (Leo), Opera (Aria), Firefox (Smart Window)B |
| AI-native browsers Built around an assistant or agent from the start. None appears in StatCounter's worldwide table; none publishes a user count. |
Perplexity Comet, Dia (Atlassian), Opera Neon, Sigma — and ChatGPT Atlas (shut down)B |
| Agentic browsing (acting for you) Chrome auto browse launched as a US preview for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers; Edge's 'Browse with Copilot' is US-only for Microsoft 365 Premium; Comet's background assistants and Neon's 'Do' are paid. |
Preview / paid tiers onlyA |
02
The leaders
Ranked by the audience each can put its AI in front of, using the figures the companies publish. Brave and Opera are the independents with audited-style public user counts, and both give their assistant away; the AI-native challengers have attention but no published numbers.
| Google Chrome + Gemini Gemini 3 'auto browse' launched 28 Jan 2026 as a US preview for paid AI subscribers; Gemini in Chrome reached all US Android users on 18 Aug 2026. Google calls auto browse experimental and warns it can act unexpectedly, including completing a purchase. |
≈69.4% of worldwide browsing (Aug 2026)A |
| Opera (Aria, Browser Connector) and Opera Neon Q2 2026 revenue $178.1M (+25% YoY), ARPU $2.46; Opera GX alone 37M MAU. Aria is free in Opera and GX; 'Browser Connector' lets users plug Claude or ChatGPT into the browser. Opera Neon, the agentic browser, is $19.90/month for its own AI and added a free plan on 12 Aug 2026 that lets other agents drive it over MCP or a local CLI. |
288M monthly users across Opera's products (Q2 2026)A |
| Brave + Leo Brave's own counts: 101M MAU at 30 Sep 2025, 122.55M in July 2026, and 130.77M reported for October 2026. Leo is the built-in assistant; Brave says it does not retain or share chats or train on them. Brave Search answered 2.46B queries in July 2026. The privacy-first AI leader by published audience. |
122.55M monthly / ≈51.7M daily users (Jul 2026)A |
| Microsoft Edge + Copilot Copilot Mode (launched July 2025) was retired on 13 May 2026 and its features — multi-tab reasoning, Journeys, voice — moved into Edge itself. The agent ('Browse with Copilot') is US-only for Microsoft 365 Premium. |
≈5.4% of worldwide browsing (Aug 2026)B |
| Perplexity Comet Launched 9 Jul 2025 for $200/month Max subscribers; free worldwide from 2 Oct 2025; iPhone from 18 Mar 2026. Free users get the sidebar assistant within rate limits; background agents are paid. Perplexity says 'millions' use it but publishes no figure. |
Free on Mac, Windows, Android, iPhone; no user countA |
| Dia and Arc (The Browser Company, Atlassian) Atlassian bought Arc's maker to build an AI browser for work; Dia reached Windows in October 2026 and asks users to connect Slack, Google Workspace and Atlassian at setup. Its first browser, Arc, has been on security fixes only since May 2025 and shuts down on 22 Dec 2026, with new Arc accounts closed and users sent to Dia. |
Acquired for $610M cash (Sep 2025)B |
| Strawberry (Stockholm) An agentic 'self-driving' browser whose companions work across sites for you; backed also by founders of Lovable, Supabase and Hugging Face. Public since February 2026; Strawberry 1.0 (October 2026) added shared team companions, parallel sub-agents and local meeting capture. No user count; a Series A is rumoured but unconfirmed. |
$6M seed (Oct 2025), General Catalyst and EQT VenturesB |
| Sigma AI Browser (sigmabrowser.com) Chromium-based, with an AI agent, deep research, chat-with-page and optional on-device AI; claims zero data collection and faster Speedometer scores than Chrome, Safari and Brave. All of these are the vendor's own claims, unverified here. |
Free; Estonia (SigmaBrowser OÜ), founded 2024C |
| Mozilla Firefox (Smart Window) An opt-in AI window beside the normal and private windows, working across open tabs and history. After user pushback Mozilla added one switch to turn every AI feature off (February 2026). |
≈3.0% of worldwide browsing (Aug 2026)B |
03
Market share: the browsers people actually use
StatCounter page-view share, all platforms, worldwide. AI-native browsers do not register. Month-to-month figures move by a point or more.
| Chrome 68.22% in July 2026. |
69.39% (Aug 2026)B |
| Safari The default on every iPhone; Apple's AI features ship through the OS rather than as an 'AI browser'. |
15.83% (Aug 2026)B |
| Edge Second on desktop (roughly 11–15% depending on the month). |
5.36% (Aug 2026)B |
| Firefox 3.34% in July 2026. |
2.98% (Aug 2026)B |
| Samsung Internet Android-only. |
2.06% (Jul 2026)B |
| Opera StatCounter's Opera line; Opera's own 288M MAU spans several products. |
1.88% (Jul 2026)B |
| Brave StatCounter breaks Brave out only in some views; Chromium-based browsers report a Chrome-like user agent, which hides Brave in many counters. |
≈2.1% in the US (Jun 2026)B |
04
The shake-out of 2025–26
The year after the AI-browser launches went to the incumbents. Standalone products were shut, folded in, bought or made free.
| ChatGPT Atlas — shut down OpenAI announced on 9 Jul 2026 that it would close the standalone browser and move browsing agents into the ChatGPT desktop app and a Chrome extension. Bookmarks and history had to be exported by hand. |
Launched Oct 2025, discontinued 9 Aug 2026B |
| Edge Copilot Mode — folded into Edge Microsoft's view: the features belong in the browser, not a separate mode. |
Retired 13 May 2026B |
| Arc — sunset Announced 22 Oct 2026, citing the security-maintenance load of the AI era; users directed to Dia. |
Maintenance since May 2025; shuts 22 Dec 2026B |
| Dia / Arc — acquired Repositioned as a browser for work. |
Atlassian, $610M cashB |
| Comet — made free Monetised by paid agents, Comet Plus ($5/month news) and, per reports, ads. |
$200/month → free (2 Oct 2025)A |
| Opera Neon — free plan for other agents Neon's own AI stays at $19.90/month; the free plan lets outside agents drive the browser through MCP or Opera's CLI. Neon had dropped its waitlist in December 2025. |
12 Aug 2026A |
| Perplexity's bid for Chrome Made while the court weighed forcing a Chrome sale; Perplexity was then valued at about $18B. |
$34.5B unsolicited offer (Aug 2025)B |
| Chrome stays with Google No forced sale of Chrome (a 'poor fit'), no contingent Android spin-off; Google barred from exclusive distribution deals for Search, Chrome, Assistant and the Gemini app for six years, and must share some data with rivals. |
Judge Mehta's remedies ruling, 2 Sep 2025B |
05
The AI labs' own apps: agents that browse without a browser
The model makers mostly stopped trying to own the browser. They ship an agent that rides inside the browser you already use, or a desktop app, and they cut standalone apps that don't hold an audience.
| Anthropic — Claude in Chrome A Chrome extension that reads and acts on pages; piloted with 1,000 Max users in August 2025, opened to all paid plans by December 2025. Chrome only — not other Chromium browsers, not mobile. Since August 2026 it is a full Cowork client sharing sessions with Claude's desktop, web and mobile apps. At GA Anthropic dropped per-action approval for automatic safety checks, saying they 'cannot eliminate' the risk. Enterprise admins enable it per domain. |
Generally available 26 Aug 2026 (paid plans)A |
| OpenAI — ChatGPT desktop app + Chrome extension OpenAI closed its own browser and moved the browsing agent into the ChatGPT desktop app and a Chrome extension — the same 'ride inside Chrome' bet as Anthropic. |
Replaced ChatGPT Atlas (Aug 2026)B |
| OpenAI — Sora app (video, not a browser) Hit 1M downloads faster than ChatGPT, then fell — monthly downloads went from about 3.2M (Nov 2025) to 1.2M (Jan 2026) per third-party estimates. Shown here because it is the same pattern as Atlas: the lab keeps the model and drops the standalone app. |
Launched Sep 2025; shut down 24 Mar 2026B |
| Google — Gemini inside Chrome Google owns both the model and the browser, so its agent ships as a Chrome feature rather than an app (see Chrome + Gemini above). |
The incumbent version of the same ideaA |
| Perplexity — Comet Perplexity owns no model franchise to protect, so the browser is its distribution; it is free, on every platform, and monetised by paid agents and subscriptions. |
The one lab that kept its own browserA |
06
Risks buyers are told to weigh
An agent that reads a web page can be steered by text hidden in that page. That is the security story of the whole category.
| Gartner: block AI browsers for now 'Cybersecurity Must Block AI Browsers for Now' named Comet, Atlas, Opera Neon and Dia, citing indirect prompt injection; it told organisations to block installs with existing endpoint and network controls. |
Advisory, 1 Dec 2025B |
| Prompt injection is unsolved OpenAI's CISO called it 'a frontier, unsolved security problem' at Atlas's launch; the UK NCSC wrote in December 2025 that it may never be fully mitigated the way SQL injection can. |
Vendors and regulators agreeB |
| Agents that spend money Google warns that Gemini in Chrome can make mistakes or act unexpectedly, including completing a purchase without permission. |
Confirmation prompts, still fallibleA |
07
Where an entrant could fit
Our reading, not a sourced figure. The browser itself is a commodity — Chromium is free, and every AI-native browser here is built on it — so the scarce things are distribution and trust.
| Distribution belongs to the incumbents Gemini, Safari's OS-level AI and Copilot arrive by update on browsers already installed. A standalone AI browser has to win a default-browser switch, which is why Atlas closed and Comet went free. |
Chrome + Safari + Edge ≈ 90% of useB |
| Privacy-first AI Leo's no-retention stance and Sigma's on-device AI are the same pitch at two scales. The opening is AI that runs locally or keeps nothing, sold to users and to regulated employers. |
Brave's 122M+ users show the demandA |
| The managed browser for work Enterprise buyers want agents inside policy controls — the gap Gartner's advisory describes. Dia is aiming there; so are security-first enterprise browsers. |
Atlassian paid $610M for itB |
| Let any agent drive the browser Rather than owning the model, Opera now hosts other people's agents (Claude, ChatGPT, MCP clients) — a neutral 'agent runtime' position. |
Opera Neon free plan, Browser ConnectorA |
?
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- No AI-native browser (Comet, Dia, Neon, Sigma) publishes a user count. Perplexity says 'millions' use Comet daily without a figure; a reported 95% fall in search interest for Comet between October 2025 and July 2026 comes from a trade blog and is a proxy, not usage.
- Brave's August (126.25M) and October (130.77M) MAU figures are reported by PiunikaWeb from Brave's transparency feed; we confirmed July 2026 (122.55M) only.
- Sigma's speed, memory and 'zero data collection' claims are the vendor's own; no independent test was found. Third-party traffic estimates for sigmabrowser.com are from low-quality aggregators and are not used.
- Opera Neon's free plan is from Opera's own post (12 Aug 2026); one product directory still lists 'no free plan', which appears out of date.
- Brave's browser-only versus all-products MAU basis has been questioned by one reporter; Opera's 288M explicitly covers all of its products.
- Gartner's December 2025 note is paywalled; its contents here come from CSO Online and other coverage, and we did not see whether it has been updated in 2026.
- Strawberry's team size, a Series A, and user numbers come only from low-quality aggregators and are not used. Sora download figures are third-party app-store estimates, and one claim that a Disney deal ended with it is single-sourced and omitted.
§
Sources
- Browser Market Share Worldwide (all platforms), monthly — StatCounter Global Stats, 2026-08-31B
- Brave browser passes 100 million monthly active users — Brave Software (company blog), 2025-10-01A
- Transparency data feed — monthly and daily active users — Brave Software, 2026-08-05A
- Brave reports 130 million monthly active users (October 2026) — PiunikaWeb (citing Brave's transparency figures), 2026-11-03C
- Opera Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results Beyond the High End of Guidance Ranges — Opera Limited (investor relations), 2026-08-19A
- Your AI agents can use Opera Neon free of charge — Opera (Opera Neon news), 2026-08-12A
- Comet is now available to everyone, worldwide — Perplexity (company blog), 2025-10-02A
- Perplexity Launches Comet AI Browser for iPhone With Built-In Assistant — MacRumors, 2026-03-18B
- Perplexity Makes $34.5 Billion Bid for Google's Chrome — Bloomberg Law, 2025-08-12B
- In a major antitrust ruling, a judge lets Google keep Chrome but levies other penalties — NPR (via WAMC), 2025-09-02B
- Atlassian to buy Arc developer The Browser Company for $610M — TechCrunch, 2025-09-04B
- Dia browser launches on Windows — PiunikaWeb, 2026-10-07C
- The AI graveyard: a running list of projects and startups that didn't make it — TechCrunch, 2026-11-14B
- ChatGPT Atlas — Wikipedia, 2026-11-14C
- Microsoft Retires 'Copilot Mode' as Edge Gets Built-In AI Tools — TechRepublic, 2026-05-13B
- The new era of browsing: Putting Gemini to work in Chrome (Gemini 3 auto browse) — Google (The Keyword), 2026-01-28A
- Gemini in Chrome opens to all U.S. Android users as auto browse goes mobile — Unite.AI, 2026-08-18C
- Firefox updates Smart Window, a new in-browser AI assistant — SiliconANGLE, 2026-08-18B
- Keep AI browsers out of your enterprise, warns Gartner — CSO Online, 2025-12-03B
- Sigma AI Browser — free AI browser (product page) — SigmaBrowser OÜ, 2026-11-14C
- Opera Neon AI browser ends waitlist — MacRumors, 2025-12-11B
- Strawberry raises $6M to make advanced AI automation intuitive — Tech.eu, 2025-10-14B
- Arc browser is shutting down in December 2026 — Android Authority, 2026-10-22B
- Claude in Chrome is generally available — Anthropic (claude.com), 2026-08-26A
- OpenAI's Sora app is struggling after its stellar launch — TechCrunch, 2026-01-29B
- OpenAI shuts down Sora app — International Business Times UK, 2026-03-24C
- The Browser Company will sunset Arc and shift focus to Dia — Unite.AI, 2026-10-22C