Python Counter and a regular dictionary seem similar but have distinct purposes. The Counter class is a specialized subclass of the dictionary class, primarily used for counting hashable objects. While dictionaries store key-value pairs, Counters store elements as keys and their counts as values. Counters also provide additional methods specifically tailored for counting, such as most_common() for retrieving the most common elements. So, if you need to count the frequency of elements or perform counting-related operations efficiently, Python Counter is the way to go.