Zen Browser vs Arc: Which Should Arc Users Pick?

You've had Arc open for two years. Your spaces are sorted, your pinned tabs are exactly where your hands expect them, and then the sunset notice lands. You search for a replacement, and Zen Browser keeps showing up, usually with the label "the Firefox version of Arc."

This is a Zen Browser vs Arc comparison written for people who actually have to move. It covers the engine, the sidebar, spaces, extensions, performance, privacy, importing your stuff, and the honest list of things Zen doesn't do. It also says where Zen is the wrong pick, and what to try instead.

One disclosure up front: this article is published by the team behind Cra, a browser that competes with Zen for the same people. I've tried to be fair to Zen anyway, and I'll flag the Cra sections clearly so you can weigh them accordingly.

Zen Browser vs Arc: the short answer

Zen is a good Arc-style browser if you're happy on Firefox's engine. It is not a one-to-one copy of Arc, and it doesn't pretend to be. It borrows the vertical sidebar, workspaces, split view and compact mode, then builds its own things on top: Mods, Glance, containers.

Arc, meanwhile, is on a clock. The Browser Company announced on 22 October 2026 that Arc will be sunset on 22 December 2026, and pointed people to Dia, its AI-first browser. The Register covered the announcement, and Arc's own site at arc.net says the apps stop working on that date. Arc has had no new features since May 2025. So this isn't Zen versus a living competitor. It's Zen versus something you have to leave anyway. If you want the full timeline, we wrote it up in is Arc browser shutting down.

My honest take: if you use Firefox already, or you work across macOS, Windows and Linux, Zen is a sensible landing spot. If you've lived in Arc on a Mac and want the same keys, the same spaces, the same Little Arc, the engine swap to Gecko is a bigger change than the marketing suggests.

Quick comparison table

The table hides the detail, so let's go through it.

Zen Browser vs Arc on the engine: Chromium versus Gecko

Picture a Tuesday morning. You open the internal expenses tool your company built in 2019, and it greets you with a blank page and a polite suggestion to use Chrome. That's the engine difference in one scene, and it decides more than any feature does.

Arc runs on Chromium. Zen runs on Firefox's Gecko engine. Every site you use was probably tested on Chromium first.

Most of the time you won't notice. Gmail, Notion, Figma and GitHub all work fine in Firefox. But a few things do bite:

• Chrome-only web apps: some internal company tools, older Google Workspace add-ons and a few banking portals still assume Chromium.
• DRM streaming: LinuxCompatible reports that Zen lacks a licensed Widevine, which can break DRM-protected streaming on macOS and Windows. If you watch Netflix in your main browser, test that first.
• Extensions: Chrome Web Store extensions don't install. Firefox has most of the popular ones, uBlock Origin included, but not everything, and niche tools tied to a single Chrome API are the usual casualties.
• Developer tools: Firefox DevTools are good, but if your muscle memory is Chrome DevTools, you'll feel the difference daily. Panels sit in different places and the network tab filters differently.

On the plus side, Gecko is an independent engine. Some people care about that on principle, and I understand why. A web where every browser is Chromium isn't healthy.

Here's a quick test I'd run before anything else: list the five sites you'd be most upset to see break, open each in Firefox for ten minutes, and log in. If all five behave, the engine stops being a worry. If one doesn't, that single site can be the whole decision.

Sidebar, spaces and tab management

Take Command-T. In Arc it opens one bar that searches your open tabs, your archive, your history and a list of actions, all at once. In Zen you get a URL bar and search tools that do part of that job, but your fingers will keep reaching for something that isn't there. That small gap is the pattern for the whole sidebar story.

Zen's Workspaces are the closest thing to Arc Spaces outside Arc, and the shape is right. You get a vertical sidebar, workspaces with their own tabs, pinned tabs, and a compact mode that hides the sidebar until you want it. Tabs on the left, spaces you switch between, pinned items at the top. If you've ever explained Arc to a friend, you can explain Zen the same way.

What feels different:

• Tab lifecycle: Arc's Today and auto-archive habits are part of how it keeps itself tidy. Zen handles tabs differently, so expect to do a bit more manual cleaning.
• Keyboard shortcuts: Zen has its own defaults. Your Arc muscle memory won't map across cleanly, though you can rebind many of them.
• Command bar: Zen has no single bar that covers tabs, archive, history and actions the way Arc's does.
• Little Arc: that quick, throwaway window for opening a link and leaving? Zen has nothing identical.

The complaint you'll hear most from people who move isn't "Zen lacks feature X." It's "my hands keep doing the wrong thing." Arc's shortcuts are a workflow, not just a list, and a browser can have every feature and still feel wrong for the first two weeks.

Split view, Glance and Mods

Glance is the feature I'd miss most if I moved to Zen and then left. Alt-click a link and it opens in an overlay on top of the page you're reading. You skim it, close it, and you haven't lost your place or added a tab. It's nice. I'd use it daily.

Split view supports up to four tabs in a grid, matching Arc's ceiling. For comparing two documents, or keeping a chat beside a spreadsheet, that's enough, and it works the way you'd expect.

Mods are Zen's customization system: community-made themes and tweaks you install from inside the browser. If you liked Arc's Boosts for restyling sites, you'll find a similar spirit here. According to LinuxCompatible, Zen 1.24b, released on 29 October 2026, also added shareable per-site Boosts. That's a direct nod to Arc users, and in a Zen Browser vs Arc matchup it's one of the few places Zen simply does more than the thing it's imitating.

The flip side is that heavy customization means more things that can break. Zen is still labelled beta, as a 2 November 2026 comparison on SupaSidebar's blog noted. In practice, that means a Mod that worked on one version may need an update after the next, and since Mods are community-made, you're waiting on volunteers. I'd keep to a handful you really use, and treat the rest as toys.

Importing from Arc

A few months ago, moving from Arc to Zen meant rebuilding by hand. That's changed. Zen added Arc import in version 1.24b, and per LinuxCompatible the release added the ability to import Arc and Dia Spaces and Profiles. Version 1.24.1b followed on about 6 November 2026, moving to Firefox 159.0.1 and patching a high-severity layout vulnerability.

Two things to check after any import, whichever browser you choose:

1. Pinned tabs and folders: confirm they landed in the right space, not flattened into one list.
2. Logins and extensions: passwords may come across, but extensions never do. You'll reinstall each one.

There's a third check I'd add: open the space you used most and count its pinned tabs against Arc. If you had 14 and see 11, find the missing three now, while Arc still opens. After 22 December 2026 you won't be able to compare.

If you're worried about losing bookmarks or sidebar content before the shutdown, our guide on exporting Arc browser bookmarks walks through safe ways to take a copy first. Do that regardless of where you land.

Zen Browser vs Arc on performance and Apple silicon

The benchmark gap is real but small. SupaSidebar cites a Jitbit Speedometer 3.0 run on an M3 Pro MacBook: Zen scored 31.6, against 37.6 for Safari and 37.7 for Chrome. That's roughly 16 percent behind.

What does 16 percent feel like? Think of an interaction that takes 100 milliseconds in Chrome taking about 116 in Zen. On a modern Mac, that's below what most people perceive. Where the difference shows up is memory and battery with lots of tabs and Mods loaded, so I'd run your real workload for a week before deciding. A benchmark is a number, and your 60-tab research session is a life.

Arc, for what it's worth, was never light either. It was a Chromium browser with a heavy interface, and it wasn't the lightest thing on a MacBook Air. So don't expect Zen to feel dramatically leaner or heavier than what you're used to. If it does, it's probably your Mods.

Privacy and ownership

Zen is open source and privacy-focused, which is a genuine strength over Arc and Dia. Its code is public, it blocks trackers, and it inherits Firefox's privacy tools including containers for isolating identities. Containers are something Arc never really had, and if you juggle several accounts for the same site, they're excellent. A freelancer with three client Google accounts can keep each one in its own container and never log out.

Arc was free but closed, owned by a company that has now walked away from it. Your data on Arc's side is slated for deletion: TechCrunch reported on 22 October 2026 that accounts will be deactivated and personal data deleted within 30 days of shutdown. That's a good reason to want your setup living on your own disk, not in someone's cloud.

What Zen doesn't have

Going by what Zen users and reviewers report, several Arc behaviors have no clone in Zen, and you should know which before you commit:

• Little Arc equivalent: no small floating window built for quick links.
• Air Traffic Control: routing links from other apps to a chosen space isn't the same here.
• Arc's shortcut set: you'll relearn keys.
• Chromium compatibility: by definition, you lose it.
• Stable status: it's still beta, so a new version can change how a Mod or a layout behaves.

None of these is fatal. Together they add up to a switching cost, and it's higher the more deeply you used Arc.

If your hands are the thing that has to switch, pick the browser that keeps your shortcuts. Features you can relearn; reflexes take months.

Mobile and Arc Search

Arc Search on iOS and Android has its own, smaller deadline. The Browser Company says it loses AI features and tab sign-in and sync on 23 November 2026. The app stays usable as a basic local browser, but that's about it. Zen doesn't have a mobile version to move to, so if mobile sync matters you'll end up combining a desktop pick with Safari, Firefox or Chrome on your phone.

Who should pick Zen

A developer I'd picture here runs Fedora at work, a Windows desktop at home and a MacBook on the road. Arc never covered all three for her, and Zen does. That's the clearest case for it.

More broadly, pick Zen if you already like Firefox, use more than one operating system, or care about open source above all else:

• Linux or Windows users: Zen runs on Windows and Linux, where Arc's Mac-first design never really reached. It's the obvious pick if you're not on a Mac.
• Firefox converts: if you were already uneasy about Chromium's grip on the web, this is your moment.
• Tinkerers: Mods and themes give you plenty to play with.
• Privacy-first people: containers plus uBlock Origin is a strong combination.

Skip it if you need Chrome extensions, rely on Chromium-only web apps, stream DRM video in your main browser, or want Arc's exact workflow with the shortcuts and Little Arc you already know.

Where Cra fits (a competing option, from us)

Since we make it, treat this section as a pitch and check it against the facts. Cra is a free, MIT-licensed, native macOS browser on Chromium, aimed at people who want to keep Arc's sidebar workflow. It runs on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 14 Sonoma or later. There's no Intel, Windows or Linux build, and that's a real limit. It's also young, at version 0.1.x, and independent, not affiliated with The Browser Company.

Here's how it maps to what Arc users actually miss:

• Spaces and pinned tabs: spaces with a colour and emoji each, Today, pinned tabs, and Control-1 to 9 to switch.
• Favorites: a different set per space.
• Command bar: Command-T for tabs, archive, history and actions.
• Auto-archive: Today tabs tidy themselves after 12 hours to 30 days.
• Little Windows: Arc's Little Arc, on Option-Command-N.
• Split View and Picture in Picture: up to four panes.
• Air Traffic Control: links from other apps go to the space you pick.
• Extensions: Chrome extensions from the Chrome Web Store.
• Shortcuts: Arc's defaults, rebindable in Settings.

Importing works differently from Zen's. On first launch, Cra reads Arc's spaces, pinned tabs, folders, favorites and archive straight from Arc's files on disk. There's no export step, Arc doesn't need to be running, and there's no deadline. Later you can import again from the Cra menu or Settings. It also pulls tabs, passwords and sign-ins from Dia, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, Helium, Firefox, Zen and Safari.

What Cra lacks: Easels, Boosts, Peek and Notes aren't there yet, and it has no AI features and won't add Arc Max-style AI. If Boosts mattered to you, Zen's shareable per-site Boosts are a point in its favour. There's no account, no server and no telemetry.

Zen vs Cra at a glance

If you aren't on an Apple silicon Mac, the right-hand column is off the table and the choice makes itself. If you are, the real question is whether Chrome extensions and Arc's keys matter more to you than Firefox's engine and Zen's Mods.

What about Dia?

Dia is The Browser Company's own suggested next step, but it's a different kind of browser. It's AI-first, and it doesn't carry over Arc's sidebar workflow the way its marketing implies. For many Arc users, what survives is less than you'd hope. Zen, in a Zen Browser vs Arc contest, keeps far more of the sidebar habit than Dia does, which is part of why it comes up so often.

If you want to see the wider field, including tools that keep Arc's layout, we compared them in browsers with spaces like Arc.

A practical way to decide before 22 December 2026

You have time, and the imports are easy, so spend a week testing instead of agonising. Here's a routine that works:

1. Back up first: copy anything you can't lose out of Arc. Cra's import reads from disk and has no deadline, but Arc's cloud data won't last past the shutdown.
2. Install both candidates: Zen and Cra can sit side by side with Arc. Nothing conflicts.
3. Import your main space: just one, and live in it for two days.
4. Test your worst site: the web app that always breaks, your streaming service, your work portal.
5. Count the friction: how many times did your hands do the wrong thing? That number tells you more than any feature list.
6. Commit by early December: don't wait for the last week, when everyone else is also scrambling.

Test with your worst site and your most-used shortcut. Everything else is marketing.

My recommendation

On Windows or Linux, or if you're a committed Firefox person, choose Zen. It's active, open, and now imports from Arc, and that settles the Zen Browser vs Arc question for you.

On a Mac with Apple silicon, I'd install both for a week and let the friction count decide. My bet, knowing how much people lean on Arc's shortcuts and Chrome extensions, is that most heavy Arc users will keep reaching for Command-T and find Cra the easier landing. But if you're curious about Firefox, or Glance sounds like your kind of thing, Zen is the better experiment, and it costs you nothing to try. Start the test this weekend, not on 21 December.

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Cra is a free, open-source macOS browser that brings Arc's spaces, pinned tabs and shortcuts to Chromium, importing them straight from disk. It's for Mac users on Apple silicon who want to keep Arc's workflow after 22 December 2026.