Apple Safari vs Orion in 2026

Orion is what happens when someone rebuilds Safari for people who keep hitting its limits. Made by Kagi, the paid search company, it is a native WebKit browser — so the same engine, the same battery behaviour, the same rendering — but it runs extensions from Chrome and Firefox as well as Safari, and it collects nothing.

What Orion adds to WebKit

Extension breadth is the headline. Safari's extension ecosystem is the smallest of any major browser, and Orion runs roughly 70% of the WebExtensions API, so most Chrome and Firefox extensions work. If a specific extension is why you keep Chrome installed alongside Safari, this is the browser that removes the reason.

It also ships zero telemetry, native ad and tracker blocking, and vertical tabs. Both score 5 for speed and both give you WebKit's battery efficiency on Apple hardware. Orion scores 4 for customizability against Safari's 2, which is the widest gap between them and reflects how locked down Safari deliberately is.

What Safari keeps

Integration and reliability. Safari is the system browser: iCloud Keychain, Handoff, Apple Pay, Tab Groups syncing across devices, and a level of polish that comes from being maintained by the platform owner. It scores 3 for AI features against Orion's 1, and gained real Apple Intelligence capability in 2026 — automatic tab grouping into topics, webpage monitoring, agentic password updates.

Orion's extension compatibility being partial matters in practice: most extensions work, complex ones sometimes do not, and you find out by trying. Reach differs too — Safari covers macOS and iOS; Orion adds a Linux build that reached public beta in March 2026, with Windows planned, but Kagi has said there are no plans for Android.

Which should you choose?

Choose Safari if you want the browser Apple maintains, with system integration nothing else can match and no surprises. For most people inside the Apple ecosystem it is the correct default, and its privacy work is genuinely good.

Choose Orion if Safari's extension limits are what actually frustrate you, or if zero telemetry matters enough to accept a smaller team and occasional extension quirks. It keeps everything good about WebKit and removes the main reason people leave it — and it is one of the only browsers that lets you stay on Apple's engine while running the wider extension ecosystem.