7 best Momentum alternatives for Chrome in 2026

You love the calm, but you’ve hit Momentum’s ceiling

Momentum nailed something real. You open a new tab, and instead of a wall of thumbnails you get a gorgeous landscape, your name, a quote, and one gentle question: what’s your main focus today? For a lot of people, that’s the whole reason to install a new-tab extension.

Then you use it for a month, and the ceiling shows up. You want a real to-do list, not one focus. You want your links grouped. You want your own photos. And you discover that nearly all of it lives behind Momentum Plus, the paid tier. Momentum’s fuller features are paid at time of writing, so the free page you fell in love with starts to feel like a demo.

The good news: the new-tab category has exploded, and several tools give you Momentum’s calm plus the stuff Momentum charges for, or skips entirely. Here are the 7 best Momentum alternatives for Chrome, ranked, honestly.

The shortlist at a glance

Now the detail: why each earns a spot, and where it falls short.

1. InTab - Momentum’s calm plus an actual workspace

Full disclosure: this is the one we make, so keep your skeptic hat on. We’ll be specific.

What it is. A Momentum-style new-tab dashboard - clock, beautiful wallpapers, quick links, widgets, a to-do list, and focus tools - wrapped around a genuine productivity suite. Where Momentum stops at the photo and one focus, InTab keeps going into tab groups, save-and-restore sessions, AI auto tab-naming, colored bookmark folders, text highlights with AI titles, a reading list, and unified search.

What’s good.

• The calm new-tab look you came to Momentum for, without the Plus paywall on basics - the to-do list, backgrounds, quick links, and widgets are free.
• Real tab management: group tabs, restore whole sessions, let AI name and cluster them.
• Built-in AI that can summarize a page, chat with a page, rewrite, translate, and summarize YouTube videos - plus a sidebar that proxies your logged-in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity session.
• Privacy by design: the UI runs in an isolated shadow DOM, and your page content stays yours.

What’s missing.

• It’s more than a minimalist wants - if all you crave is a photo and a clock, this is more tool than you need.
• Smart Screenshots is a Pro feature; the rest of the free tier is generous.

Add InTab to Chrome - free →

2. Momentum - the beautiful baseline you already know

We have to be fair to the tool everyone’s replacing. Momentum is the category leader for a reason: it’s gorgeous, calming, and dead simple. A high-res landscape each morning, a quote, your name, one focus.

Pro. Nobody does the “moment of calm before work” ritual better. If your only goal is a serene tab, it delivers.

Con. The free tier is heavily clipped. To-do lists, multiple focuses, mantras, link groups, and custom photos are gated to Momentum Plus (paid at time of writing). It’s inspiration, not a workspace.

3. Tabliss - the minimalist, open-source pick

If Momentum’s upsell annoyed you and you want the opposite of a subscription, Tabliss is the answer. It’s open-source, needs no account, and stays snappy. Default is a clean clock and search; a plugin list lets you add widgets one at a time.

Pro. Fully free, private, and fast. Great backgrounds, no nagging.

Con. It’s a config kit, not a workspace. You’ll spend a Saturday picking plugins and still have no tab sessions, no AI, no bookmarks manager when you’re done.

4. Start.me - the link-dashboard portal

Start.me takes a different angle: instead of one photo, it turns your new tab into a grid of link widgets, notes, bookmarks, and RSS feeds. Think of it as a personal or team start page.

Pro. Excellent for people who live in dozens of sites and want them organized into tidy, shareable dashboards.

Con. It’s busier and less calm than Momentum - more portal than zen. The best organizing and sharing features push you toward a paid plan.

5. Toby - for teams that share tabs

Toby’s superpower is the shared collection. You and your teammates curate sets of tabs - an onboarding set, a research set, a launch checklist - and anyone can open the whole thing in one click.

Pro. The best tool here for small teams that think in tab collections.

Con. As a personal Momentum replacement it’s thin: no daily photo ritual, no AI, no focus tools. The collaboration is the whole product, and it wants an account.

6. Infinity New Tab - the customization buffet

Infinity throws everything at the wall: weather, notes, to-dos, bookmarks, themes, and a wall of icon widgets. If you love tweaking, it’s a playground.

Pro. Huge amount of customization and widgets in one place.

Con. The free tier can serve ads on the new tab - the one screen where ads never belong, since you’ll see it a hundred times a day. The good stuff sits behind a Pro plan.

7. Muzli - for designers who want inspiration, not a to-do

Muzli replaces your new tab with a curated feed of design inspiration - dribbbles, product shots, articles, trends. It’s less “get organized” and more “stay inspired.”

Pro. For designers and creatives, it’s a delightful, free daily feed.

Con. It’s a content stream, not a productivity dashboard. No tabs, no focus, no AI tooling - if you want to do work rather than browse ideas, look elsewhere.

How to choose your Momentum alternative

• Want the calm look plus real tools - tabs, AI, bookmarks, to-do, all free? Pick InTab.
• Want pure minimalism with no account and no paywall? Pick Tabliss.
• Want an organized link portal? Pick Start.me.
• Want team-shared tab sets? Pick Toby.
• Want design inspiration on every tab? Pick Muzli.
• Just want the photo and don’t mind the upsell? Stay on Momentum.

The honest summary: Momentum is still the prettiest way to feel calm for two seconds. But if you want those two seconds and a browser that actually helps you work, the all-in-one alternatives have quietly overtaken it.

If you want to dig deeper, we ranked the whole category in our guide to the best Chrome new tab extensions, rounded up the best Chrome extensions for productivity, and broke down the best AI Chrome extensions if the AI sidebar is what sold you.

Try the calm-plus-workspace pick free

InTab gives you Momentum’s serene new tab and the tab, AI, and bookmark tooling Momentum makes you pay for - on a generous free tier (Smart Screenshots and a few other AI extras stay a Pro perk), with your core data kept local-first.

Add InTab to Chrome - free →