If you have never once questioned if you should use another browser, or "is something better out there"? Then you're probably fine with Chrome.
That said, if you're on this page, it means you're not that type of person, and therefore you should absolutely just give Arc a shot. Chrome is stagnant and Arc has re-envisioned what a browser means in the modern day.
We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
The first question people usually ask when they hear about Arc is "is Arc built on Chrome?" and the answer is no, but both Arc and Chrome are built atop the Chromium engine, which means that core functionality like bookmarks, passwords, and browser extensions are built atop the same foundation, meaning that they will work across both browsers, and even transferring your data from Chrome to Arc is made incredibly easy. Now let's dive into if you should actually make the switch ⤵
Winner: Arc Browser
This is an area that The Browser Company (parent company of Arc) have spent a lot of time focusing on. They don't want to know what sites you're visiting and have an extensive privacy policy (actually readable) on their website.
Get Arc Browser for free here.
Winner: Arc Browser
If you're using Chrome, you're probably aware that it hasn't actually changed or innovated much within the past 7+ years, and that's where Arc has come in as a new browser to shake up the space. What if browser productivity was completely thought from the ground up, the user-experience was actually delightful, between micro interactions, AI features to make your life easier, along with simple features baked in like automatic Picture-in-Picture, media controls, and more.
Arc has completely re-thought the way that tab management and bookmarks function, introducing a vertical tab bar, native split view, intuitive keyboard shortcuts, and more, making the browser feel more like an operating system of its own.
I've tried all web browsers on the market, productivity-focused and all, and Arc is the first one that I actually feel excited about the space again, and if you give it a shot, I think you will too.
Get Arc Browser for free here.
Winner: Arc Browser
Arc has done something incredibly interesting here, they've actually built the MacOS version of their browser entirely in Swift (and believe it or not, they even made Swift work on Windows, so Arc is also on Windows and works great as well). No, seriously, not even Apple built their own browser, Safari, in Swift (which makes for a super interesting Arc vs Safari comparison).
So if you want to see what a browser can feel like, from subtle interactions, to battery life, along with deep OS integration, you're in for a full experience with Arc. Chrome on the other hand has been built in a more general programming language, so that it is easily ported across MacOS, Windows, and Linux. Which is great for cross-system accessibility, although you can feel the night and day difference when using Chrome alongside Arc (Arc just feels better in every single interaction).
Get Arc Browser for free here.
Winner: Chrome
Who uses Chrome? Billions of people—from businesses, to students, to well everyone. This means that every single minor change that is made to Chrome, is tested like crazy, as if they introduce a bug, that's billions of people who are unable to get work done, browse, or search... Oh, and on that search part, every minute that people are unable to search Google costs them millions of dollars, so it's actually in Chrome's best interest to just work.
Arc on the other hand, they are trying to shake up the browser market with innovative features, even introducing deep AI capabilities with Arc Max. With innovation and quick feature iteration and launches, comes a bit less stability. It's a tradeoff, and one that even Google has 2 additional versions of Chrome to account for this:
These two addition versions of Chrome allow Google to catch issues with large test groups before they ever get rolled out to Chrome. This allows them a ton of protection from issues arising, which makes their browser incredibly stable and secure.
Winner: Both (Sorta)
Arc currently works on MacOS and Windows (with a full iOS app as well), that said, the Android Arc Browser app is presumably coming sometime in 2024.
So if you're using an obscure OS like Linux, or an obscure mobile OS, than Chrome is likely to have an option for you whereas Arc will not. That said, the Arc mobile app is absolutely fantastic, so even if you're using Chrome on desktop, I highly recommend you give the Arc Mobile app a shot if you have an iPhone. Yes, it's made even better with the desktop app as well, but it's a great way to try out the waters of Arc.
All-in-all, OS availability is where Chrome completely dominates the market. They have more than 60% browser marketshare, meaning that Chrome is available on nearly any operating system you can possibly think of, including, of course, ChromeOS, which is unlikely to ever support an alternative browser to Chrome.
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The future of the internet masked as a browser, built for productive teams.
Arc is a web browser. In simple terms, it's a replacement to Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge, but oh, also so much more... A big part of what makes Arc great is actually the fluidity and experience when using it. It feels more core to the operating system than any other browser on the market.
If you try it out, you'll know what I mean.
Your browser has mainly just been in the background, right? You don't think that much about it, it's more just a tool to access the internet. Yeah, that's where Arc changes that—what if a browser could give you moments of micro-delight in the day-to-day usage? In fact, why don't other browsers?
If you're like most people and have just been using Chrome or Safari and not thinking much about your browser experience, Arc by The Browser Company is probably for you—let me explain...
There's no shortage of productivity-focused browsers out there like SigmaOS, Sidekick, Shift, amongst many others, and I'm willing to bet that if you're reading this, you probably haven't even checked them out or have heard of them. But you're here because you've heard of Arc. Great! That's because Arc is trying to just be a better browser, one that people don't even realize they need or want.
Whether you've tried a new browser in the past (e.g. Firefox, Vivaldi, Opera) or feel like switching is too much work. We're here to tell you that it's worth it to try out Arc. It's not like other web browsers on the market.
The best way to describe it is it's as if Apple re-thought web browsers from the ground up, and built it natively as if it was something more, like an internet browser, or rather an internet machine. What if your browser could actually feel as native and fluid as your operating system? Yeah, that's Arc browser. It was built for everyone, by people that really care. In a space that most people stopped "caring" about 6+ years ago.
Best of all, it's built with the Chromium engine as the backbone, so all your favorite browser extensions will work right out of the box!
If you're someone that uses the best productivity tools like Motion, Superhuman, or Notion then Arc is the perfect addition to your stack.
For starters, it's currently only available for MacOS, Windows (in Beta), and iOS, so if you're not using any of those operating systems, then Arc won't work for you.
I, for example, use Android (Chrome on mobile), and Arc Browser on desktop, and I'm totally fine with that—you don't need both together to benefit from Arc. But if you're someone that wants the exact same browser as their mobile app as well, Arc might not be for you.
At the end of the day, Arc is not just for the productivity-minded or the early adopters. It was built for everyone, whether you're a student, a stay-at-home parent, a CEO, or retired, there's something in Arc for you, that will make your day-to-day browsing experience just that much better.
Rating: A-
Arc's team have totally rethought the bookmarks and the "tab experience" with a powerful vertical tab bar (don't worry, it can be hidden if you prefer that), along with an incredibly powerful profile workspace feature called "Spaces".
Spaces allow you to stay focused and easily segment your work while easily organizing tabs are important to you in folders.
For example, set up a personal space, favorite your YouTube, Spotify, WhatsApp, and Gmail tabs—from there, they function like mini apps. Now, with the swipe of 2 fingers, you're in your work space. All of your favorite apps are swapped out with your work apps, and you're logged into all of your work accounts:
No other browser lets you segment work to this degree. It's so powerful, yet such a simple implementation. Tough to truly explain without experiencing it yourself.
What clicked for me, is when someone explained the following to me (when I was at the time an avid user of Chrome): With Chrome, Google is in the business of ads, so they are actually incentivized to give you a crummy tab management experience. Why? Because what happens if finding the tab you're looking for is difficult? You open up a new tab and search Google again (and you're shown more ads).
So it's more that the UI/UX in many ways by the industry leader is built in such a way to optimize for displaying ads. Arc on the other hand is building features that give you a better experience, first-and-foremost.
Are you like us and like to have your CRM open when you're going through your email inbox via Superhuman? Bookmark a split screen for that. Like to take notes in Notion while watching YouTube videos? Save a split screen for that too.
Imagine for a moment that a bookmark was more than just a bookmark—with Arc, it is. Is gives you powerful split view functionality to group together commonly used websites together, making it so that it's only a click away.
While it sounds like a cute name, it's quite the powerful feature. How many times have you wanted to quickly peek into a web page from Slack or other programs, only to be thrown into another tab in a sea of tabs within your main browser? Little Arc is where clicking on links from other programs starts, with the quick option to open it into the full browser experience. Might seem small, but it makes for a super enjoyable and light experience.
Every single person that uses a computer, uses a browser. It's probably the most competitive software market in the world, and Google pays Apple some $20bn per year just to have Google set as the default search engine in Apple products.
Because of that, this can't be covered in just a single section in a post. Here's a full write-up on how Arc compares to the top browsers on the market.
If you're curious as to Arc vs Chrome or Arc vs Brave, you can see our thoughts there.
Arc is currently available on MacOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. That said, if you're using Linux, ChromeOS, or something else, you'll probably be hard-pressed bo give this new browser a try because they haven't announced Linux and other OS focus/release.
Arc is officially on Windows and you can get it here. They even have a fun website where they answer the question: isarconwindowsyet.com (spoiler alert, it is and they've onboarded over 200K users already).
Arc Search is available now on both iOS and Android. Both Andra and myself use it as our default browser on mobile, though when using a tablet, Chrome does still give a better tablet experience (for now).
If you're intrigued, want to know more, and see more of the features/benefits in GIF format, go check out this article where we've done a deep dive on why we think Arc is the future of the internet.
Well, there's no more waiting list, so you can go ahead and give it a shot today if you're on MacOS, Windows, iOS, or Android, so we'd say yes, Arc is worth it.
The browser by Google.
Chrome is the most popular browser in the world, owning over 60% of the browser marketshare—so chances are, you're reading this site in Google Chrome right now.
Love it or hate it, you should appreciate it. Without Chrome, the Chromium engine wouldn't exist—why does that matter? Well the open-source browser foundation that was built by Google is likely powering whatever browser you're using right now.
All-in-all, Chrome is great. It was our main browser for over a decade. And yes, we tried all of leading browsers on the market (Safari, Brave, Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi—even giving Edge fair shot when they introduced OpenAI into the mix).
We continued going back to Chrome—it was just familiar and worked well, especially if your personal and work life are tied to Google (as many are).
Well... That was up until Arc (by The Browser Company).
If someone is solely looking for the most stable internet browser on the market.
If you're using Windows, Linux, or an operating system outside of MacOS.
If you're using MacOS, then there's actually some exceptional alternatives on the market. Now, that doesn't mean that Google Chrome isn't for you if this is the case, but what we are saying is that you have options, and should consider trying the browsers listed on our best browser software & tools list.
Chrome has all of the normal features that browsers have, so we'll cover some of the more standout features (which isn't all that unique as most other browsers also have what Chrome has, and even more).
Of all the Chrome features, this was one of all the key features that we were most excited about. If you're using Chrome, you've probably experienced first-hand tab overload. And heck, you've probably even experimented with alternative tab management browser tools like Workona or Toby.
Tab management is where Chrome has always struggled, and tab groups were set out to solve this issue:
Rather than describe all of the features you're probably already familiar with like tabs and bookmarks, I think it's time better spent explaining why you shouldn't really expect new features with Chrome.
When you have a product that has billions of users and hundreds of millions of companies relying on it, you need to focus on stability over everything else.
Is that why it took the Chrome team over a year of beta testing "Tab Groups" before publicly releasing it? Oh, and then only leaving it core to the new tab experience for a few months before ultimately disabling it and making it a manual opt-in feature.
Yeah, that's because of inertia. Billions of people are expecting the browser to work one way, you can't have core functionality change one day without pissing off potentially hundreds of millions of people.
Okay, okay, so all of that is totally fair... But also sorta a boring answer 😅 okay, you win—let's ruffle some feathers!
Ah good-ol bookmarks! Tried, true, and tested. Do they actually work well for referencing back what you saved? Nope! But they are familiar, so don't touch them!
Wait... You said they don't work well—let's dive into that for a moment. Hear me out—bookmarks weren't actually created to make finding pages you're looking for to be easier.
The more you use bookmarks, the less you search Google to find what you are looking for, and the less ads that Google can serve you. Ah! Misaligned incentives! Get overwhelmed with all your open tabs? Google wants this! It results in you closing the overwhelm of tabs, only to later search Google to find back what you're looking for.
What if bookmarks and tab management could be rethought and reinvented 🤔 well they can be, that's why much of Chrome's team have left Google to join Arc Browser to actually build out all the ideas that they had at Google but were killed because releasing them would actually hurt Google's Ad business. 🤯
The best part about Chrome for mobile is that it works cross-platform, from iOS to Android, and everything in-between. That said, it's quite standard with what you'd expect (for better or worse).
Things counting against it though are that they don't have the address bar at the bottom of the screen (which makes it far more reachable on mobile). Even Apple put the address bar at the bottom of the screen with Safari on iOS because it just makes sense.
This is where we feel the mobile app is lacking. It just hasn't changed much, just like the desktop app. But that's also what people love about it, so I suppose that's what you get with Chrome. At least they're consistent with who they are and what they're trying to accomplish.
Before Arc, I've have just told you that the major competitors on the market were pretty much the same thing, with slight opinionation. Take Brave, the privacy-focused opinionation. Looks and feels almost identical to Chrome, but you don't need to sign up with an email address to use it (you instead have a hash key).
If you're on MacOS, give Arc Browser a shot—it's essentially what Chrome could have been if they didn't rely on an ad business (although it's coming soon to Windows as well). It genuinely rethinks from the ground up of what a browser is, and could be. They bake in delight into every interaction, and it just does more.
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