Best Arc Browser Alternatives: Dia vs. Zen vs. Vivaldi

The short answer: if you want the closest thing to Arc with the least friction, use Dia — The Browser Company's own successor has a one-click Arc importer and a free tier that covers Arc's old core features (Profiles instead of Spaces, tab groups, split view, ad/tracker blocking). If you want Arc's calm, sidebar-driven look without an AI subscription or a corporate roadmap, Zen Browser is the nearest open-source match. If you want a mature, deeply customizable browser that has been stable for a decade and isn't betting its future on AI, pick Vivaldi. If ad-blocking and an optional AI assistant matter more than an Arc-like layout, Brave is a solid fourth option. None of the four is a pixel-perfect clone of Arc, because Arc's specific sidebar-and-Spaces design was never cloned wholesale by anyone except Zen — but all four will take your passwords, bookmarks, and history without much trouble.

The shutdown, in brief

The Browser Company confirmed on its own farewell page that Arc for macOS and Windows stops working on December 22, 2026, when Arc accounts are deactivated and users can no longer sign in. Personal data tied to those accounts is deleted within 30 days after deactivation, and no new Arc accounts have been issued since October 22, 2026. Pandromeda covered that timeline in full when the deactivation date was first confirmed; this piece is about what to do next, not the countdown itself.

What actually made Arc different

Arc's pitch, visible in the browser's own marketing language going back years, centered on a handful of structural choices that most Chromium and Firefox browsers didn't make by default:

• A vertical sidebar instead of a horizontal tab strip — tabs, bookmarks, and an "Easel" canvas lived in a collapsible left-hand rail rather than across the top of the window.
• Spaces — separate tab/profile environments (work, personal, a project) that you could swipe between, each with its own color theme and pinned tabs.
• A command bar — a Spotlight-style overlay (Cmd/Ctrl+T) for opening tabs, search, and commands without touching the mouse.
• Split View — two pages side by side in one window, with easy drag-to-split.

None of today's alternatives replicate all four exactly. The comparison below is about which pieces each one keeps, and what you trade to get them — a framing similar to how we approached comparing AI code editors after forks splintered that market.

Dia: The Browser Company's own successor

Dia is built by the same company that made Arc, and it's the only option on this list with an official, first-party Arc-to-Dia import path. According to Arc's farewell notice, importing from Arc carries over passwords, bookmarks, extensions, and browsing history; Arc Spaces become Dia Profiles, Arc Folders become Tab Groups, and pinned tabs and favorites come across with their original names. The import can run during Dia sign-up or later from Dia's import menu, any time before the December 22 cutoff.

Dia is currently available for macOS and Windows only — no Linux or mobile build. Structurally, it keeps Arc's split-view idea (renamed "Splits") and tab grouping, but it replaces the command bar with an AI chat called "Ask Dia" and adds AI-native features Arc never had: a daily "Morning Brief" that summarizes your calendar and inbox, "Synthesis" reports pulled from tools like Slack and Notion, and auto-generated "Decks" and meeting prep. The Browser Company's framing is explicit: Arc's old browser features are free in Dia, and AI is optional on top.

That "optional" part has a real price tag. Dia's own plans page lists three tiers: Better Browser is free and includes Profiles, tab groups, split view/picture-in-picture, ad and tracker blocking, and sync — but no AI at all. Better Answers adds Ask Dia and tool-context chat; Dia's pricing card shows this at $10/month, while a feature-comparison list elsewhere on the same official page labels it $20/month — both figures appear on diabrowser.com as of this writing, so treat the exact price as unconfirmed until Dia fixes the discrepancy. Better Days, with 6x the usage and the Morning Brief/Decks features, is $100/month. A 14-day trial of Better Days is offered with no card required.

Zen Browser: the closest look and feel, free and open source

Zen Browser bills itself as "a calmer internet" and is the alternative that visually and philosophically sits closest to pre-shutdown Arc. It's free and open source (MPL-2.0 licensed), built on Firefox — the current release tracks Firefox 158 — and ships for macOS, Windows, and Linux, with a Flathub build on Linux. It's still labeled "Beta" on its own site.

Zen's own feature list centers on Workspaces (separate tab environments, Arc Spaces' closest analogue), Compact Mode (hides the tab bar until you need it), Glance (quick preview/switching between tabs), Split View, and Zen Mods for deeper customization. There's no official AI assistant and no command-bar equivalent called out on Zen's site — this is a browser built by a small open-source team, not a venture-backed company, and its roadmap is driven by community mods rather than an AI product strategy. Zen has no first-party Arc importer; since it's Firefox-based rather than Chromium-based like Arc, migration generally means using Firefox's standard bookmark/password import tools rather than a one-click Arc transfer.

Vivaldi: the power-user veteran with no AI agenda

Vivaldi is the most established name here, built by a team led by former Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner and shipping since 2016. It's free, Chromium-based, and by far the widest-reaching in terms of platforms: Windows, macOS, and Linux on desktop (including ARM builds), plus Android, iOS, and even an Android Automotive build, according to Vivaldi's own download page.

On features, Vivaldi doesn't copy Arc's sidebar directly, but it covers similar ground with its own tools: Tab Tiling (split-screen viewing), two-level Tab Stacking, and Workspaces for grouping tab stacks into separate contexts — a rough parallel to Spaces. It also bundles a sidebar with Web Panels (any site pinned to the side), a built-in Notes tool, an ad/tracker blocker, optional Proton VPN integration, and genuinely unusual extras like a built-in Mail client, Calendar, and RSS feed reader. Vivaldi's own site lists no built-in generative-AI chat feature, in contrast to Dia and Brave — it's the most explicitly "no AI agenda" option of the four.

Brave: if ad-blocking and optional AI matter more than layout

Brave doesn't try to copy Arc's sidebar or Spaces at all, but it's worth including because it answers a different part of the brief: strong default privacy plus an optional AI assistant, without a subscription being required for either. Brave is free, Chromium-based, and available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. Per Brave's own pages, it blocks third-party ads, trackers, cookie-consent pop-ups, and fingerprinting by default, and it ships "Organize tabs" grouping rather than Arc-style Spaces.

Its AI assistant, Brave Leo, is free to use with no login required, can summarize pages, PDFs, and documents, answer questions, and write or translate text, and draws on models from Mistral's Mixtral, Anthropic's Claude, and Meta's Llama (plus bring-your-own-model support). Brave's own Leo page states that Leo doesn't retain or share chats or use them for model training. A paid Leo Premium tier unlocks more models and higher limits; Brave's site links to an upgrade page but doesn't list a specific price. A stripped-down, AI-free build called Brave Origin is also sold as a one-time $59.99 purchase.

Pricing and privacy, side by side

Three of the four are free at the core. Zen and Vivaldi are free with no paid tier for the browser itself (Vivaldi sells merchandise and takes donations; Zen accepts donations). Brave is free with optional paid add-ons (Leo Premium, Firewall + VPN, Brave Origin). Dia is the outlier: its free "Better Browser" tier matches what Arc gave away for nothing, but the AI features that are Dia's whole reason for existing sit behind $10–$20/month or $100/month subscriptions, per Dia's own pricing page.

On privacy, Vivaldi and Zen both lead with explicit no-profiling language and are the only two with no generative-AI feature sending page content to a model by default. Brave's Leo is opt-in and, per Brave, doesn't retain chats or use them for training. Dia's privacy settings page states user data is "never sold or used to build ad profiles" and that sync is end-to-end encrypted, though using Ask Dia or Synthesis inherently means sending tab and tool content to an AI model — something none of Arc's original features ever required.

Migrating your data before December 22

If you're moving to Dia, Arc's own instructions say you can import during Dia's sign-up flow or later from Dia's import menu — on macOS this sits under "Import from Another Browser," and on Windows it's in the Dia app menu. Do this before December 22, 2026; after that date Arc can no longer retrieve account data at all. If you're moving to Zen, Vivaldi, or Brave instead, none of them offer a dedicated Arc importer, so the practical path is exporting bookmarks and passwords from Arc using Chromium's standard export tools (Arc is Chromium-based) and importing them through each browser's own "Import browser data" flow — Spaces, Easels, and Arc-specific layouts won't carry over, since those are Arc-specific concepts none of the three replicate by name.

Which one should you actually pick

• You liked Arc's AI-adjacent conveniences and don't mind paying: Dia, and use the official importer before the deadline.
• You liked Arc's sidebar and calm design but never used its AI: Zen Browser, understanding it's still in beta.
• You want a browser that will still exist in five years and isn't chasing an AI pivot: Vivaldi.
• You care most about ad-blocking with AI as a nice-to-have, not a subscription: Brave.

What to do next

Whichever browser you pick, do the migration before the window closes. Export or import your Arc passwords, bookmarks, and history now rather than in December — Arc's own farewell notice makes clear that once accounts are deactivated, the company can no longer retrieve that data at all. If you're choosing between modern AI browsers more broadly, it's worth reading how other AI-assisted tools are being evaluated against their predecessors, including our look at how teams are weighing tool switches in other parts of the stack this year.

Written byFelix Moreau

Felix Moreau writes Pandromeda's software coverage and how-to guides. He covers Windows, macOS and Linux updates, the apps people rely on, emulators and developer tools, and turns official documentation into clear, numbered steps that work on the current version.

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