Toby Alternative: 5 Free Tools (and One We Actually Built)

If you're searching for a Toby alternative in 2026, you probably hit one of three walls:

• The 3-collection limit on Toby's free tier finally bit you.
• Pro pricing felt steep for what you actually use.
• The tile-based dashboard never matched how you work — you reach for the keyboard, not the mouse.

We've been on each side of all three of those. Below: an honest look at five free tools you can switch to today, and yes — we'll point at the one we built. We'll also tell you when Toby is still the right choice and you shouldn't bother switching.

What Toby actually is (so we know what we're replacing)

Toby is a visual tab manager. New-tab page becomes a board. Each "collection" is a row of tab tiles. You drag, drop, tag, share with teammates, sync across devices.

It's well-designed. The friction is the model:

• It's mouse-first. You navigate with clicks, not keystrokes.
• It assumes your work is project-shaped. If your work bleeds across contexts, organising into tidy collections is itself work.
• The free tier is tight. 3 collections at the time of writing. Most heavy users blow through that in a week.
• Pro is ~$60/yr. Reasonable, but not free, and not cheap if you're a solo user.

A "Toby alternative" needs to solve at least one of those frictions. Below: five candidates, ordered loosely from "lightest" to "closest replacement."

1. OneTab — the free, dead-simple option

If your real need is "stop having 80 tabs open in front of me," OneTab does the job in one click.

• Click the icon → all open tabs collapse into a saved list.
• Lists are local, not synced.
• No accounts, no signup, no paid tier.
• Search is basic — it's a long list with browser-find.

Where it stops being a Toby replacement:

• No visual dashboard.
• No collections in the Toby sense.
• No real cross-device sync (export/import only).

Pick OneTab if: all you wanted from Toby was "save my tabs and free RAM." Skip everything else on this list.

2. Session Buddy — the safety-net option

Session Buddy is the OG of session managers. It auto-saves windows and lets you restore them after a crash or reboot.

• Save the current window as a session, name it, restore later.
• Premium tier (~$19/yr) adds cloud backup and scheduled saves.
• Mature, stable, very low UI flash.

Where it stops:

• It's not built for daily organisation. It's a backup tool.
• The interface looks every bit its age.

Pick Session Buddy if: you don't want a Toby replacement so much as a "don't lose my work" guarantee.

3. Workona — the heavy alternative

Workona is the closest philosophical sibling to Toby — a workspace-per-project model — but it's bigger in scope.

• Each "workspace" owns its own tabs, notes, links, Google Drive integration.
• Built for teams, with shared workspaces and roles.
• Pricier than Toby Pro at the upper tiers ($7/mo and up).

Where Workona doesn't quite replace Toby:

• It's heavier mentally. Workspaces > collections in friction.
• Free tier exists but feature-gated.
• If you liked Toby for being light, Workona will feel like a swap to a different problem.

Pick Workona if: you want full project workspaces, not just tab collections — and you have a team to justify the pricing.

4. Bookmarks + Chrome tab groups — the zero-tool option

Yes, this is a real answer. The native combination is more capable than people think.

• Tab groups (right-click any tab → "Add to new group") give you collapsible, colour-coded sub-tasks within a window.
• Bookmarks folders, used as a flat list, work as a saved-tab archive.
• Chrome sync handles cross-device for free.

Where this stops:

• No real search across saved bookmarks beyond what Chrome's address bar offers.
• No sessions in the Toby sense.
• Once you have 200+ bookmarks, finding one becomes its own problem.

Pick this if: you're a minimalist and you'd rather configure no third-party tool. It's a real workflow.

5. Amazing Tabs — what we built when Toby didn't fit

Full disclosure: we built Amazing Tabs because Toby didn't match how we worked. We're keyboard-first, search-first, and the failure mode that drove us crazy was "I know I had a tab open with this Stripe link — where is it?"

What it does differently from Toby:

• Press / from anywhere in the browser → spotlight-style search. Type three characters, hit Enter, the tab is back.
• Chrome omnibox shortcut: at <query> searches your saved tabs without opening any popup.
• Cards, not tiles. A "card" is a saved tab, group, or session. Cards are searchable text, not visual blocks. (You can organise cards into collections if you want. Most of our power users don't.)
• Cross-device sync is built in once you sign in.
• Free tier: 20 cards. Premium: $4.90/mo or $42/yr. Lifetime: $49 one-time, capped at 200 spots.

What we'll say honestly:

• If you came to Toby specifically for the visual board, Amazing Tabs will look spartan to you. We optimised for keyboard, not mouse.
• We don't have native team plans yet. If shared workspaces with colleagues was the Toby feature you cared about, Workona is the better swap.
• The free tier is intentionally tight. If you save full sessions, you'll hit the cap and need Premium. We made this deliberate after watching nobody upgrade from a more generous cap.

Try the keyboard-first model. Add Amazing Tabs to Chrome — free, no signup. After install, press / and see what we mean.

Side-by-side: which Toby pain does each tool solve?

Pain you had with Toby	Tool that fixes it
Free tier too tight	OneTab (free), Amazing Tabs (20 cards), native Chrome (free)
Too mouse-heavy	Amazing Tabs (/ search), native Chrome (keyboard tab groups)
Pro pricing felt steep	OneTab ($0), Session Buddy ($19/yr), Amazing Tabs ($42/yr or $49 lifetime)
Lost tabs in a crash	Session Buddy (purpose-built), Amazing Tabs (sessions sync)
Wanted real team workspaces	Workona
Wanted lighter UI	Amazing Tabs, OneTab

If you can't tell which one of these is your pain, your real answer is probably "Toby was fine, you just want it cheaper." In which case wait for Toby's next promo or move to Amazing Tabs Lifetime ($49 once vs $60/yr forever).

When you should stay on Toby

We're not here to convert everyone. Stay on Toby if:

• You genuinely use the visual dashboard and you'd lose productivity without it.
• You're on a paid team plan and the shared collections are how your team works.
• You hit the 3-collection limit but $5/mo is in your budget — Pro is the cleanest fix.

Switching tools is friction. If Toby is meeting 80% of your need, the migration cost probably outweighs the win.

Switching cost: what it actually takes to leave Toby

People over-estimate this. From the users we've moved over:

1. Export your collections. Toby has a JSON export under settings. Save it.
2. Pick the new tool and import what's importable. Most tools will accept a list of URLs; titles and tags need to be re-added manually unless you script it.
3. Don't migrate everything. Half of what you saved in Toby six months ago is dead. Migrate the last 30 days and re-save things as you encounter them.

Total time, with focus: 30–60 minutes. Most of which is choosing what not to migrate.

The honest pick

If we're being blunt, three answers cover 90% of "Toby alternative" searches:

• You wanted free. → OneTab.
• You wanted keyboard speed and cross-device search. → Amazing Tabs.
• You wanted a beefier team workspace. → Workona.

If you're not sure which, install Amazing Tabs (it's free to try with the 20-card limit) and see if the keyboard-first model clicks. If it does, you'll know within a week. If it doesn't, you've lost nothing — uninstall and pick from the rest of the list.

Add Amazing Tabs to Chrome — free → Install from the Chrome Web Store. 20 cards free, upgrade only if you want unlimited and cross-device sync. See pricing for the full breakdown — including the $49 lifetime deal (capped at 200 spots).