Tabkeeper vs OneTab: a local-only OneTab alternative

An honest comparison: what OneTab is better at, what Tabkeeper does differently, and how to bring your OneTab list across.

What OneTab does better

• It is dead simple. One click on the toolbar icon turns every tab in the window into a list. There is almost nothing to learn and almost nothing to configure.
• It is tiny and fast. The extension does one job and stays out of the way, which is exactly why people keep it for years.
• A huge install base. It is one of the best-known extensions of its kind, with years of use behind it and plenty of community help when you have a question.
• It works in Firefox as well as Chrome. Tabkeeper is Chrome only today.

If the one-click list is all you want, OneTab is a good answer and you do not need us.

What Tabkeeper does differently

• Local only. Collections live in your browser's IndexedDB; settings in chrome.storage.local. The extension requests no host permissions and makes no network calls, apart from one license check if you buy Pro.
• No account. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to sign in to, nothing to lose access to.
• No cap. Unlimited collections and tabs per collection, on the free tier.
• Open source. The source will be public when it ships, so the claim above can be checked rather than believed.
• Backups you hold. Pro writes encrypted backups to a file you choose, with a passphrase only you know. Free plain-JSON export is always available.

Where Tabkeeper differs in daily use: collections have names, you can drag tabs between them, search covers everything you have saved, and Chrome tab groups survive a save and restore with their titles and colours.

Bringing your OneTab list across

Open the OneTab page by clicking its toolbar icon, then click Export / Import URLs in the link list at the top right. Copy the text out of the textarea — or save it as a .txt — and paste or pick it in Tabkeeper's import box. Our parser is verified against real OneTab exports, including titles that contain a | character, and each blank-line-separated block becomes its own collection.

One honest limit: OneTab's plain-text export carries only URLs and titles. Group names, dates, starred and locked state are not in the file, so no importer can bring them over. Imported groups arrive numbered, and you can rename them.

What Tabkeeper costs

Free for unlimited collections, saving and restoring, search, the importers, and plain JSON export, keyboard shortcuts and tab groups. Pro is $29, one-time and adds encrypted backups with a passphrase (AES-256-GCM) and session history with undo.

Tabkeeper Privacy policy

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