The 9 Best New Tab Extensions in 2026 (Tested)
A new tab opens dozens of times a day, and by default it shows almost nothing - a search box, maybe a grid of faded thumbnails. A good new tab extension turns that blank space into something useful: a clock, your links, the weather, your tasks, a feed of what is happening. The best new tab page is the one you are happy to land on every time the browser opens.
The category is crowded, and the tools are not interchangeable. Some are built for calm and focus. Some are open-source and free forever. Some are packed with widgets. Some are aimed squarely at developers. To find the best new tab extension for you, the right question is not "which one wins" but "which one fits the way you actually work." Below are nine we rate, each with the kind of person it suits, honest pricing, and which browsers it runs on, so you can pick the most customizable new tab page for your setup.
#How We Picked
We have spent years living in this category, and we judged each tool on the things that matter once the novelty wears off:
- Widgets and integrations - how much real work the page can do, not just how it looks on day one.
- Customization - layout control, backgrounds, themes, and whether you can shape the page to your taste.
- Browser support - Chrome is easy. Firefox, Safari, and Edge separate the serious tools from the Chrome-only ones.
- Sync - whether your setup follows you to another browser or a new laptop, or vanishes the moment you switch.
- Price and honesty - free, freemium, or paid, and whether the pricing is upfront.
A quick disclosure before the list: we make Start Page HQ, which is one of the nine picks below. We have kept this honest. Every other tool here is one we genuinely respect, we say plainly who each one is best for, and we tell you when a different tool is the better choice than ours.
#The Best New Tab Extensions at a Glance
| Extension | Best for | Price | Browsers | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start Page HQ | All-in-one cross-browser dashboard | $3.99/mo, $25/yr, $49 LTD | Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, web | Demo only |
| Momentum | Calm, focus, and inspiration | Free, or $3.33/mo Plus | Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge | Yes (limited) |
| Tabliss | Minimal, open-source new tab | Free forever | Chrome, Firefox, Edge | Yes (full) |
| Bonjourr | Safari, iPhone, and design | Free forever | Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, iOS | Yes (full) |
| New Tab Widgets | The deepest widget catalog | Free / $4.99 mo / $179.99 lifetime | Chrome (web app elsewhere) | Yes (10 widgets) |
| Infinity New Tab | Speed dial and wallpapers | Free | Chrome, Firefox (+ CN browsers) | Yes (full) |
| daily.dev | A developer news feed | Free, plus optional Plus | Chrome, Edge (PWA on Firefox) | Yes (core feed) |
| start.me | Bookmarks and team dashboards | Free / $25 yr Pro / $30 mo Teams | Chrome, Firefox, Edge, web | Yes (limited) |
| Protopage | A classic tabbed RSS portal | Free | Web app (any browser) | Yes (full) |
#Start Page HQ
Best for: an all-in-one dashboard that works on every browser and syncs across every device.
This is the tool we build, so treat the praise with the appropriate pinch of salt - but the niche it fills is real. Start Page HQ is a customizable new tab dashboard with 50+ widgets: links, tasks, notes, RSS, weather, calendars, world clocks, a Pomodoro timer, currency conversion, AI image and translation, plus developer tools like a JSON formatter and regex tester. You arrange them on a grid, and you can build separate pages for Work, News, and Personal and switch between them with a click.
Two things set it apart from most of the list. First, it ships native extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, plus a hosted web app, so the same dashboard shows up everywhere and your setup syncs across devices automatically. Second, it is genuinely productivity-first rather than decoration-first. If you mostly want a pretty photo and a quote, this is more than you need. If you want the browser new tab to do real work, it fits.
It is a paid product: $3.99 a month, $25 a year, or $49 once for lifetime, all including every widget and cross-device sync, with a free public demo at startpagehq.com/demo so you can try it without signing up. Pick something else on this list if free is a hard requirement or you only ever want a minimal page.
#Momentum
Best for: a calm, focused new tab that nudges you toward what matters today.
Momentum is the tool that defined the modern new tab page for a lot of people. Open a tab and you get a full-screen daily photo, a greeting, the time, the weather, and a single "main focus" prompt for the day. It is deliberately minimal, and the restraint is the point - there is very little competing for your attention, which is exactly what its large and loyal user base loves.
The trade-off is depth. The free version covers a clock, weather, a quote, a simple todo, and a short links row, and the richer integrations live behind Momentum Plus. Cross-device sync is a Plus feature too, so the free tier stays on one browser. If a beautiful, distraction-light tab is the whole goal, Momentum is hard to beat.
Pricing is free, or around $3.33/month for Plus billed annually. It runs on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you like the calm but want more widgets and sync without a subscription tier, our Momentum alternative page lays out the differences, and the neutral Momentum vs Tabliss comparison is worth a read if those two are your shortlist.
#Tabliss
Best for: a minimal, private, genuinely free and open-source new tab.
Tabliss is the open-source darling of the calm-new-tab crowd. It is free forever with no paid tier, GPL-3.0 licensed, and privacy-first by design: no account, no tracking, and every setting stored locally in your browser. You get Unsplash and GIPHY backgrounds, several clock styles, weather, a todo, quick links, search, and around twenty small modules you arrange across three layout zones.
Because everything is stored locally, there is no cross-device sync - switching browsers or laptops means rebuilding your page, though manual export and import exist for backups. There is also no Safari extension. None of that bothers its roughly 100,000 daily users, who value the calm, no-account simplicity over feature depth.
Tabliss is free, open source, and runs on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. If you want the same minimal feel with more widgets and real sync, see our Tabliss alternative breakdown.
#Bonjourr
Best for: Safari and iPhone users, and anyone who wants a design-led free new tab.
Bonjourr is the one to know if you live in Safari. It is free, open-source, and privacy-first like Tabliss, but its aesthetic is explicitly iOS-inspired: Apple-style fonts, rounded settings panels, soft transitions, and a single opinionated column you mostly leave alone after setup. It also bakes in a Pomodoro timer and an analog clock, which Tabliss does not.
Crucially, Bonjourr covers the platforms Tabliss skips. It runs on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari, ships a real iOS app on the App Store, and has a hosted web version at bonjourr.fr you can open anywhere. Like the other open-source picks, it stores settings locally with no cross-device sync, and it takes an explicit "no generative AI" stance. The project is on a fast release cadence with an active two-person team.
Bonjourr is free forever and GPL-3.0. If you are weighing it against Tabliss, our neutral Tabliss vs Bonjourr comparison covers the trade-offs in detail.
#New Tab Widgets
Best for: Chrome users who want the deepest widget catalog and free placement.
New Tab Widgets has one of the largest catalogs in the category - 67 widgets, including stocks, Spotify, Gmail, and Google Calendar - and a free-placement layout that lets you drop widgets anywhere on the page rather than into a fixed grid. The visual design is modern and polished, with per-page wallpapers and custom CSS for tinkerers. The free tier is genuinely usable: up to 10 widgets on one page, no signup required.
The catch is reach. The extension is Chrome-only; Firefox, Safari, and Edge users fall back to a hosted web app rather than a true new-tab replacement. Cross-device sync sits behind the Pro tier, and the lifetime plan is steep at $179.99 with a global seat cap.
Pricing runs free, $4.99/month, or $179.99 lifetime, and the extension targets Chrome. If you want a comparable widget depth across more browsers, see our New Tab Widgets alternative page or the neutral Momentum vs New Tab Widgets comparison.
#Infinity New Tab
Best for: a polished speed-dial page built around bookmarks and wallpapers.
Infinity New Tab takes the opposite approach to the minimalists: it is a rich grid of bookmark icons, with thousands of pre-loaded site icons for one-click setup and 365 hand-picked HD wallpapers so the page always looks fresh. A few sidebar gadgets - weather, todo, notes - round it out, and cloud backup with one-key recovery keeps your layout safe. It has a particularly strong following in non-English markets, with localized search engines built in.
If your new tab is mostly about getting to your sites fast, the speed-dial model is satisfying and quick. It is less suited to people who want tasks, feeds, or a real productivity layer, and it targets Chrome and Firefox plus Chinese-market browsers, so there is no native Safari or Edge option.
Infinity New Tab is free. If you like the speed-dial idea but want it on Safari or Edge with more widgets alongside, our Infinity New Tab alternative page covers the gap.
#daily.dev
Best for: developers who want a personalized tech news feed on every new tab.
daily.dev is a different kind of new tab extension: instead of widgets, it fills the page with a personalized feed of developer content. You pick tags - React, Go, AI, Kubernetes, security, whatever your stack is - and it ranks articles, tutorials, and videos for you. There are Squads for topic-based discussion, bookmarks with reading lists, and an optional Plus tier for AI summaries and power features.
It is the right pick if "show me more about my stack every time I open a tab" is the goal. It is not a general dashboard - there is no weather, no tasks, no calendar - and the browser story is uneven: the extension takes over the new tab on Chrome and Edge, but the Firefox extension was discontinued in favor of the PWA. The core feed is free, with sponsored posts mixed in.
daily.dev is free with an optional Plus subscription, on Chrome and Edge. If you want that feed next to your tasks and calendar rather than on its own, the daily.dev vs Hacker News comparison and our developers page show how to combine the two.
#start.me
Best for: heavy bookmarkers and teams who need a shared dashboard.
start.me is bookmarks-first and proud of it. It has best-in-class bookmark management - folders, tags, per-bookmark notes, and a large template gallery - plus an integrated RSS reader so news and links live in one place. It has a long history with researchers, OSINT folks, and corporate intranets, and it backs that up with real team features: branded dashboards, SAML SSO, and shared workspaces.
For a personal new tab it can feel heavier than it needs to be, and several widgets sit behind the PRO tier. But if you manage a wall of bookmarks or need a portal multiple people share, few tools here are built for that as deliberately.
Pricing is free, $25/year for PRO, or $30/month for Teams, on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge plus a web app. If you want the bookmark-heavy workflow as a personal command center with more widget types, see our start.me alternative page.
#Protopage
Best for: fans of the classic tabbed portal with sticky notes and RSS.
Protopage is the original personalized start page, running since the mid-2000s, and it still has devoted users a decade and a half later. The model is a set of tabbed pages holding sticky notes, bookmarks, and an award-winning built-in RSS reader, all backed by a cloud account with daily offsite backups. If you remember the iGoogle era fondly, this is the closest living relative.
The honest caveat is age. The interface has barely changed since its Web 2.0 launch, there is no dark mode or modern responsive layout, and the project is effectively in maintenance mode. It runs as a hosted web page rather than a browser extension, so it does not replace the new tab directly without setting it as your homepage.
Protopage is free and works in any browser as a web app. If you want the same tabbed notes-and-RSS workflow with a current design and real extensions, our Protopage alternative page maps it across.
#The Best Free New Tab Extensions
If price is the deciding factor, several picks here are free and stay free. The best free new tab extension depends on what you value:
- Tabliss and Bonjourr are the standouts - both open-source, no account, no upsell, with everything unlocked. Pick Bonjourr if you need Safari or iOS; pick Tabliss if you only use Chrome, Firefox, or Edge and want the wider widget kit.
- Infinity New Tab is free with a full feature set if you want a speed-dial page.
- Protopage is free if the classic tabbed-portal model appeals.
- Momentum, New Tab Widgets, daily.dev, and start.me all have usable free tiers, with the richer features behind a paid plan.
Free and open-source tools trade away cross-device sync and broader support. If "free forever" is non-negotiable, start with Tabliss or Bonjourr. If you want sync and a deeper feature set and will pay a little for it, the paid options earn their keep.
#Which New Tab Extension Should You Pick
Match the tool to the job:
- You want calm and focus: Momentum, or a minimal page in Tabliss or Bonjourr.
- You want it free and open-source: Tabliss, or Bonjourr if you need Safari and iPhone.
- You want the most widgets on Chrome: New Tab Widgets.
- You want a fast bookmark launcher: Infinity New Tab or start.me.
- You are a developer who reads a lot: daily.dev.
- You want one dashboard on every browser, synced everywhere: Start Page HQ.
There is no single best new tab extension for everyone, and that is the honest answer. The best new tab page is the one whose strengths line up with how you actually spend the dozens of tabs you open each day.
#Build Your Own Customizable New Tab Page
If you want a customizable new tab dashboard that runs on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge and keeps your 50+ widgets in sync across every device, that is exactly what we built Start Page HQ to be. You can drop a Links widget for shortcuts, a Kanban board for work, RSS feeds for news, and a Pomodoro timer for focus onto the same page, then build separate pages for each part of your life.
The fastest way to see whether it fits is the live demo - it is pre-loaded with pages and widgets you can poke at without signing up.