Does Pulse have a prestige system like Cookie Clicker?

Yes. In Pulse, prestige unlocks at one million lifetime energy. Spending that lifetime energy on a reset converts it into Prestige Points via a square-root curve — one million energy is one point, four million is two, twenty-five million is five. Each point gives a permanent +0.1 multiplier to both click income and passive energy per second. Cookie Clicker's Heavenly Chips system is the spiritual ancestor of this loop; Pulse's version is shorter and simpler.

Can Pulse keep earning in a background tab?

Pulse pauses the live tick when the tab is suspended, then awards offline progress when you return — at 50 percent of your current energy per second, capped at 24 hours. So a background tab is fine for short stretches, but the cap means leaving Pulse open overnight gives the same reward as closing it overnight. Cookie Clicker's offline behavior is configurable and tends to be more generous if you're hunting deep idle stacking.

Is Cookie Clicker free to play?

Yes — the original browser version of Cookie Clicker by Orteil is free at orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker. There is also a paid Steam release with extra features and Steam achievements. Pulse is free in the browser with no sign-up and no Steam version.

Which idle game has more long-term depth?

Cookie Clicker, clearly. It has 19-plus generator tiers, hundreds of achievements, the Garden, the Stock Market, the Pantheon, the Grimoire mini-game, sugar lumps, a modding scene, and over a decade of updates. Pulse has 8 generators, a prestige multiplier loop, and a click-power upgrade that persists through prestige — designed as a 5 to 15 minute session, not a six-month commitment.

Does Pulse work on mobile?

Yes — Pulse is built as a single responsive HTML page with DOM-based rendering (no canvas), so the orb and buy buttons work the same on phones, tablets, and desktop. All controls have 44-pixel minimum tap targets. Cookie Clicker has dedicated iOS and Android apps in addition to the browser version, so the mobile experience there is more polished.

Pulse vs Cookie Clicker — Idle Game Comparison

If you've been searching for a Cookie Clicker alternative, a games-like-Cookie-Clicker list, or just a browser idle game you can pop open between tasks, you'll end up comparing options. Pulse is one of those options — a neon-themed idle clicker we built for Vibe Arcade. Cookie Clicker is the legacy: a free browser incremental by Orteil released in 2013 that essentially defined the modern idle-clicker genre.

This post is the honest side-by-side. I built Pulse, so I know its mechanics line by line. I've played plenty of Cookie Clicker. The two games share a clear DNA, but they're tuned for very different sessions. Here's what's the same, what's different, and which one fits your time.

Want to try Pulse first, then read the comparison?

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What Both Games Share

At the core they're the same shape of game — that shape being the one Cookie Clicker invented. You click something to earn currency directly. You spend that currency on generators that earn passive currency-per-second. The first generator is cheap and modest, each tier above it is exponentially more expensive but exponentially more productive. Numbers grow into the millions, billions, trillions. Eventually you hit a prestige threshold, sacrifice your run, and come back with a permanent multiplier that lets the next run hit higher peaks faster.

Specifically, both games share:

The clicker primitive. Click the central thing for direct currency. In Cookie Clicker it's a giant cookie; in Pulse it's a glowing cyan orb.
Tiered passive generators. Buy more, earn more per second. Costs scale exponentially with how many you own.
A prestige loop. Hit a threshold, reset run progress, gain a permanent multiplier currency that compounds across resets.
Offline progress. Both award some fraction of your passive income while you were away.
Exponential big-number aesthetic. Counters with K / M / B / T suffixes that feel satisfying to watch tick over.
Free in the browser. No sign-up gate on the basic experience for either game.

If you like the shape of one, you'll recognize the shape of the other. The difference is in the depth and the dials.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Pulse	Cookie Clicker
Generator count	8 tiers — Neon Tube, Glow Wire, Plasma Globe, Laser Array, Tesla Coil, Fusion Core, Quantum Siphon, Singularity Engine	19-plus building tiers, expanded over years of updates
Cost multiplier per purchase	Uniform 1.15x across all generators	Varies per building (roughly 1.15x as a starting point, plus modifiers)
Prestige currency	Prestige Points (square-root curve: 1M energy = 1 point, 4M = 2, 25M = 5)	Heavenly Chips (with the Prestige tree on top)
Prestige multiplier	+0.1x permanent EPS per Prestige Point, applies to both click and passive income	Heavenly Chips boost CPS via percentage multiplier plus the Prestige upgrade tree
Click power on prestige	Persists. Click-power upgrades you bought carry through every reset	Resets at ascension (with options to re-unlock via the Prestige tree)
Offline rate	50% of current EPS, capped at 24 hours	Configurable via upgrades; tends to scale generously with investment
Achievements	Eleven baseline (first click, milestones, prestige tier) — no hidden achievement tree yet	Hundreds, plus shadow achievements, plus achievement-driven milk multipliers
Mini-games inside the game	None	Garden (genetic crossbreeding), Stock Market, Pantheon (god system), Grimoire (spells)
Mobile experience	Web only, DOM-based rendering, fully responsive, 44px tap targets	Web plus dedicated iOS and Android apps
Cost to play	Free in browser, no sign-up	Free in browser at orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker, plus a paid Steam version
Designed session length	5 to 15 minutes per session; a few prestiges fills a coffee break	Long-term — months to years to dig through all the systems
End-game depth	Prestige multiplier loop is currently the only late-game system	Deep: prestige tree, sugar lumps, season events, dragon, ascension challenges

What We Kept Simple on Purpose

I built Pulse as a short-session game on purpose. The brief was "five to fifteen minutes of satisfying numbers-go-up," not "a six-month progression sink." Almost every difference in that comparison table flows from that one design call.

Eight generators instead of nineteen. One uniform cost multiplier instead of a per-building tuning matrix. One prestige curve instead of a prestige tree. The prestige formula is a pure square root — your lifetime energy divided by a million, square-rooted, floored. One million energy is one point. Four million is two. Twenty-five million is five. A hundred million is ten. That math is deliberately legible. You can keep it in your head.

The unusual choice in Pulse — the one Cookie Clicker doesn't share — is that click power persists through prestige. In Cookie Clicker, ascension wipes your direct cookie-click power back to baseline; you re-earn it through the prestige tree. In Pulse, every Click Power upgrade you buy stays with you forever. Every reset starts with whatever click multiplier you've built up. That makes early-run clicking feel meaningful even on your tenth prestige, because your clicks are objectively stronger than they were on the first. The number on the orb still moves.

The design tradeoff: Persistent click power means active clickers feel rewarded across the whole arc of the game, but it also makes Pulse a poor fit for people who want a pure idle — the meta strategy is to click hard during the first minutes of each prestige run. Cookie Clicker is more flexible: you can play it as a pure idle, a clicker, or a deep optimization puzzle.

Offline progress is the other tuned-down dial. Pulse caps offline at 50 percent of your live rate and 24 hours total. Cookie Clicker's offline upgrades push that ceiling much higher with investment, which is correct for a months-long progression curve and would be wrong for Pulse. If a Pulse player could leave the tab for a week and come back stacked, the prestige loop would collapse. The 24-hour cap forces you back into the active loop.

Where Cookie Clicker Is Still the King

I'm not going to pretend the comparison is even on depth. Cookie Clicker has thirteen years of accumulated systems on top of the core loop. The Garden alone is an entire crossbreeding sub-game where you cultivate plant strains that buff specific stats. The Stock Market simulates ingredient prices and lets you trade for cookies. The Pantheon lets you slot deities into three spirit slots for stacked bonuses with tradeoffs. The Grimoire is a spell-casting system with backfire chances. Sugar lumps grow on a real-world clock. There's seasonal content. There's a modding scene with mods that add entire game layers.

None of that is in Pulse. Pulse is one screen, one orb, eight generators, one prestige loop. If you want a game that rewards months of optimization, theory-crafting on a wiki, and progression across a season of upgrades, you want Cookie Clicker.

Cookie Clicker also has community. There are guides, calculators, optimal-strategy threads, speedrun categories for fastest first ascension. Pulse, being newer and smaller, has none of that yet.

When to Play Which

Practical guidance:

Play Pulse if you want a quick browser idle session, you like the neon aesthetic, you don't want to commit to a months-long progression curve, you want to feel each click matter, or you specifically want a no-sign-up game that runs in any browser tab.
Play Cookie Clicker if you want depth, you enjoy optimization and theory-crafting, you want hundreds of achievements to hunt, you want mini-game systems inside your idle game, you want a community and a wiki, or you want a mobile app version.
Play both if you want a casual session game (Pulse) and a long-burn hobby game (Cookie Clicker) — they don't compete; they're different genre slots.

The two aren't really alternatives in the strict sense. They occupy different positions on the session-length spectrum. Pulse is a snack. Cookie Clicker is a multi-course dinner you come back to over weeks.

Try Pulse

If a five-to-fifteen-minute neon idle clicker sounds like the right shape today, give Pulse a run. Free, no sign-up, runs in your browser tab, works on mobile.

Play Pulse →

The original Cookie Clicker by Orteil is at orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker. It deserves the genre legacy.