Dia Browser vs Chromium

Dia Browser is one of the latest AI web browsers from The Browser Company (the same team who built Arc Browser).

After The Browser Company got acquired by Atlassian for $610M, they were given the full resources to double-down on their AI browser, Dia.

Dia is for those who are super excited about agentic browsers (think of a baked-in AI chat sidebar, that can co-pilot the browser with you at times).

• Dia has one of the most performant browsers out of all the current AI browsers on the market.
• Backed by the same team as the beloved Arc Browser, much of what made Arc great has been making its way to Dia.
• Since getting acquired for $610M, they now have the full backing of a $20B+ publicly traded company (Atlassian), to experiment and build in one of the most expensive and competitive spaces in the market.

• Dia hasn't decided to go the path of Agent Mode (controlling your browser for you), type features that both ChatGPT Atlas and Comet have gone deep into. So if you're looking for that, it's not likely coming.
• They can't currently use your actual ChatGPT history, so while their chat experience is beautiful and works well, I do at times wish I had more of the context from my ChatGPT account.
• They don't yet have a mobile app for iOS or Android, which feels important for something as core as your browser.

The same powerful (optional) sidebar that first put Arc Browser on the market, and that everyone else copied (including ChatGPT Atlas and even Chrome), is in Dia, and more refined than ever.

If you're someone that likes the idea of being able to have pre-built prompts that can be ran that interact with and take into consideration the content on the page you're visiting, then you'll love their "Skills" functionality.

Dia is currently totally free, with an optional $20/mo tier, that unlocks unlimited AI chat limits.

That said, you'd be hard-pressed to hit limits on the free tier, I only hit it once, and I was doing some pretty deep shopping research, referencing dozens of tabs and YouTube video content.

Dia is one of the leading AI browsers in the space, arguably with the most talented and thoughtful product and design team behind it (and now with Atlassian's backing, nearly infinite resources at their hands).

Dia is definitely worth giving it a try, the only question is really whether or not you're open to switching browsers or not. As that's likely the largest blocker. Although, if you're on this page right now, that's likely exactly what you're looking to do, so yes, Dia is worth giving a shot, especially if you've never tried and AI browser.

Chromium is something you're likely using right now without even realizing it. Are you using Arc Browser, Chrome, Brave, or even Microsoft Edge right now? Okay, then you're using Chromium.

You know those extensions you have in the top-right corner? Yep, those are Chromium extensions (often referred to as "Chrome Extensions"). Little do people know, Google built an open-source foundation to the browser, for which most of the top browsers on the market use as their foundation.

I mean you're not exactly looking at traditional competition here, but Apple does use a competing standard called Webkit. So if you're using Safari on your computer, that's running on Webkit instead of Chromium.

The super interesting part here though is if you're using iOS, any browser you're using is actually built atop Webkit—even Google Chrome. Apple requires Webkit be used on iOS regardless.

Why exactly? Well, Google pays Apple some $20bn per year to be the default search engine in Safari, so holding onto Webkit on iOS and iPad is probably one of their leverage points:

“At-least we still own the foundation of the browser for our products!”
-Apple (probably) 🤷

This genuinely probably doesn't mean much to you, but you're probably using Chromium and you probably don't care.

Just know that it makes for switching between Chromium-based browsers far easier—from transferring bookmarks, to extensions, and everything inbetween.