Despite Google Chrome’s monopoly over the web browser market, there are plenty of good alternatives you could try. Arc, one of the best Chrome alternatives, is being discontinued, but you still have better options available.
Arc Closes Its Tabs for Good
If you’ve been using Arc, you’re already aware that The Browser Company (TBC) discontinued shipping new features for the browser some time ago. Currently, TBC only offers Chromium updates, bug fixes, and patches for security vulnerabilities. This left Arc’s rather dedicated userbase, including myself, wondering about the future of the browser, especially considering TBC had already announced it was working on a new browser called Dia.
Well, TBC CEO Josh Miller has answered the community’s questions in a post titled Letter to Arc members 2025. The post talks about where Arc fell short, where TBC went wrong, why it didn’t integrate Dia into Arc, and whether or not it’ll be open-sourcing Arc for the community to develop.
Miller’s letter is anything but official confirmation that Arc’s active development is over, and the company will only be providing required security updates and major bug fixes going forward. What was once one of the most innovative web browsers ever is now a niche product used by a small community of power users—the opposite of what TBC wanted to do with Arc. In Miller’s own words:
A lot of people loved Arc — if you’re here you might just be one of them — and we’d benefitted from consistent, organic growth since basically Day One. But for most people, Arc was simply too different, with too many new things to learn, for too little reward.
TBC’s first crack at web browsers didn’t challenge bigger browsers like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, but it was different enough to make a place for itself. I have used Arc since February 2024, when I got entry to its beta program on Windows, until a few months ago, when the browser bordered on being practically unusable.
Most of my time daily driving Arc was spent hoping that TBC would achieve feature parity with the macOS version, but it never came to that. Arc on Windows was far inferior to its macOS version, but TBC did such a good job with Arc on Mac that I kept hoping for them to replicate it on Windows.
The lack of features on the Windows version kept Arc from being the ultimate Chrome alternative it aimed to be, at least on Windows. However, if you’re using macOS, it still is one of the best browsers you can use, despite this announcement.
There Are Better Browsers Out There
The community wanted Arc to be open-sourced so it could be developed independently. However, Arc is built on custom infrastructure called ADK, Arc Development Kit. It’s the secret sauce TBC uses to create its browsers, meaning it’s also at the core of Dia, its upcoming browser. Arc can’t be fully open-sourced without also exposing ADK, and TBC aren’t willing to make that code public yet.
This means it’s about time you start looking for alternatives, and you’re in luck. There is a surprising number of web browsers to try out in 2025, all with their unique take on the internet.
Browsers like Brave, DuckDuckGo, or Avast Secure Browser do great from a security perspective. If you’re a tab hoarder, Vivaldi, Zen, and even Opera GX are great options. You also have the option of switching to a mainstream browser like Chrome or Edge. Based on my limited experience, I’d recommend staying away from Safari, though.
If you want my recommendation, go with Zen Browser. It’s my current daily driver, based on Firefox, and has proven itself in my quest to find the ultimate browser on Windows. If you’ve been using Arc and want to switch, Zen has a very similar layout and feature set, meaning you’ll feel right at home. It’s also available on macOS and Linux, so it really does cover all user bases and surprisingly fares much better on feature parity despite still being in beta.
