Dia Browser vs Safari

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.

Safari is Apple's web browser for that comes out-of-the-box for anyone who uses a MacBook or iPhone.

With Safari, you're not going to get anything too cutting-edge or innovative, because they, like Google Chrome are focused on stability for their 1+ billion users.

Since Apple is a hardware company at the end of the day, the whole point of Safari is that you're going to get a great cohesive experience if you're using all Apple products (Mac + iPad + iPhone).

The largest benefit to be had here, in our eyes, comes from Apple owning both the hardware and software layers. This allows them to go above and beyond with optimizations like battery life and cross-device syncing.

While they have baked in password management

We don't really see much major innovation or differentiation coming to Safari though. Why? Because this isn't Apple's core business. Not only that, but Apple has zero interest in going after the B2B and collaborative browser space. When comparing Arc Browser vs Safari, you'll see first-hand that Arc has a lot more going on in the features and differentiation space as they ultimately want to be the browser for teams and collaboration.

We do applaud Apple for adding tab groups, and allowing for them to be on the side of the browser window. There's some small similarities when comparing Safari or Brave in the recently released sidebar tab management in Brave and Arc Browser.

With Safari, you get a familiar and safe UI. It looks like a browser, it looks pretty much the same as it has the past decade, and it's relatively bland in terms of how it looks.

Safari User Interface

There's just not much to mention here, but the truth of the matter is some of this is by design. Their focus is to be stable, functional, and to let the content of the website you're currently on, shine.

This is where we can give Apple some props on the user-experience, if of course you're also using other Apple products. Take for example you visit a website on your iPhone, you get a prompt in your MacOS dock that shows a website was just opened on mobile. Want to open it up on your desktop? Simply click the Safari icon in your software dock.

In actually using the browser though, there's nothing in particular that stands out as an exceptional UX. This category in particular is where Arc shines. They have the smallest UX details, that just makes using the browser on the day-to-day so incredibly enjoyable.

Are you a huge Apple fan? Do you only care about getting the best possible battery performance on your MacBook and nothing else matters to you? Do you absolutely despise change? If so, Safari is probably fine for you.

If you're on the other hand sort of bored when looking at the existing browser market and wish you could get a bit more enjoyment and productivity out of your browser, then that's where you should definitely be giving Arc a shot.

Genuinely, give Arc a shot for a week straight as your daily driver, and I'm willing to bet you that you never come back to Safari again.

Arc Browser is genuinely what Apple could have made, had they re-thought the browser from the ground up, without all the baggage that currently exists with Safari. And for that reason, that's why we rank Arc at the top of our best browsers list. Genuinely wouldn't be surprised if Apple one day acquired Arc and replaced it with Safari as the default browser for MacOS.