OneTab vs Tab Vacuum vs Workona vs Toby: Honest Comparison (2026)

Updated June 2026 · 8 min read

"Best Chrome tab manager" is a bad question — these four extensions solve different problems. Picking the right one means knowing what you actually want: hibernate tabs to free memory, sync work across devices, replace bookmarks with a visual board, or just dedupe and tidy in place. Below is a practical breakdown.

The 30-second answer

If you want to…	Use this
Free up RAM by stashing tabs to a list	OneTab
Sync tab workspaces across devices and teams	Workona
Replace bookmarks with a visual drag-and-drop board	Toby
Dedupe and group tabs in place, in one click	Tab Vacuum

OneTab

OneTab is the original "kill all my tabs" extension, around since 2013. Click its icon and every open tab is converted into a list of links on a single OneTab page — your tabs are closed, the URLs preserved.

Best for: Long-running research where you want to free RAM but keep the URLs. The list page is searchable and shareable.
Watch out for: No grouping by site, no dedupe of duplicate URLs in your archive, no cross-window awareness — every action operates on the current window.

Workona

Workona positions itself as a "browser for work" — it organizes tabs into named workspaces (e.g. "Project Atlas", "Q3 Planning") that sync to the cloud and across devices. Free tier exists; paid tier unlocks team workspaces and unlimited workspace count.

Best for: Teams or individuals who context-switch between several long-running projects and want everything (tabs, notes, docs) in one workspace per project.
Watch out for: Requires an account. Tabs sync to Workona's servers, so privacy-conscious users should review the data policy before installing. Paid tier ($7+/month) needed for many features.

Toby

Toby replaces your new-tab page with a visual collection board — you drag tabs onto labeled "collections", much like Pinterest for browser tabs. Free for individuals, paid for teams.

Best for: People whose tab-clutter problem is really a bookmarks problem. If you keep tabs open because bookmarks feel buried, Toby's visual board solves the underlying issue.
Watch out for: Requires an account. Cloud sync. Visual boards take effort to maintain — the system rewards curation, not "click and go".

Tab Vacuum

Tab Vacuum is the simplest of the four. Click the toolbar icon and three things happen: every duplicate tab across every open Chrome window is removed, surviving tabs merge into one window, and remaining tabs are auto-grouped by hostname (collapsed). No accounts. No cloud. One optional toggle (per-window vs all-windows scope).

Best for: Anyone whose actual problem is "I have 4 windows × 80 tabs and most are duplicates" — the in-place tidy use case the other three don't address.
Watch out for: Doesn't save sessions, doesn't sync, doesn't replace bookmarks. If you want hibernation or workspaces, this is the wrong tool.

Try Tab Vacuum

1 click. Duplicate tabs gone. Survivors grouped by site. Free, open source, ~50 lines of code.

Install Tab Vacuum →

Feature matrix

Feature	OneTab	Workona	Toby	Tab Vacuum
Removes duplicate tabs	—	—	—	✅
Across multiple windows	—	Manual	Manual	✅
Auto-groups by website	—	Manual	Manual	✅
Saves tabs to a list	✅	✅	✅	—
Cross-device sync	—	✅	✅	—
Free, no account	✅	—	—	✅
Sends data to a server	—	✅	✅	—
Open-source code	—	—	—	✅ (~50 lines)

Privacy summary

If privacy is a deciding factor:

OneTab stores your archive locally — but the extension reads URLs and recently received scrutiny over update permissions. Audit the latest version's permissions before installing.
Workona and Toby sync to their own servers by design. That's a feature, not a leak — but it means your tab list lives on someone else's infrastructure.
Tab Vacuum has no server. The extension reads tab URLs only when you click the icon, processes them in-browser, and discards them. Full source is on GitHub — you can read every line in under a minute.

Can you use more than one?

Yes — they're not mutually exclusive. A common stack: Tab Vacuum for daily tidying + OneTab or Workona for archiving. Tab Vacuum keeps the live tab bar clean; the archiver preserves URLs you want to come back to.

FAQ

Is OneTab still maintained?

Yes, but less actively than in 2018. Releases are sporadic. The core feature still works reliably.

Is Workona free?

There's a free tier with a workspace cap and limited team features. Most heavy use cases require the paid plan.

Why is Tab Vacuum free?

Because it's ~50 lines of code with no infrastructure. There's nothing to charge for. The full source is MIT-licensed on GitHub.