Arc vs Dia in 2026

This is not a rivalry, it is a succession — and an awkward one. Both browsers come from The Browser Company, now owned by Atlassian. Arc was put into maintenance mode in May 2025 and its entire team moved to Dia. If you use Arc, this page is really about whether Dia is where you go next, and the honest answer is that it depends more on your platform than your preferences.

They are not the same kind of browser

Arc rebuilt the browser around organisation: Spaces to separate contexts, a sidebar instead of a tab strip, Boosts to restyle sites, a command palette for everything. It scores 4 for customizability and supports split view, workspaces and the full Chrome Web Store.

Dia went the other way. It strips the interface back so the page dominates, and puts an AI assistant at the centre that can read your open tabs and answer questions about them. It scores 3 for customizability and 3 for extensions. Both score 5 for AI features, but they mean different things: Arc's AI renames downloads and summarises, while Dia is built around its assistant.

Anyone hoping Dia is Arc-with-a-future should know it deliberately does not reproduce the Spaces model. It is a different product from the same people.

The platform problem

Arc runs on macOS and Windows. Dia is macOS only — its Windows build is still in beta behind a waitlist, expected in late 2026. If you are an Arc user on Windows there is currently nowhere within this family to go, which is a real gap rather than a detail.

Arc also still works. It launches, renders, runs extensions and receives Chromium security patches; it simply gains nothing new and has no announced shutdown date.

Which should you choose?

Choose Dia if you are on a Mac, you want the browser this team is actually developing, and an AI assistant reading your tabs sounds useful rather than intrusive. It is the one with a future, and the free tier is usable before the paid plan.

Choose to stay on Arc for now if its Spaces model is how you work and nothing has broken. It is frozen, not abandoned, and switching to something that does not replicate it is a downgrade you can defer. If you are on Windows, or you want to leave a frozen product on principle, look at Zen Browser or Vivaldi — both do the workspace-and-sidebar model on their own engines and are actively developed.