OneTab vs Session Buddy
Use OneTab when you want a crowded window gone in one click and a list to come back to. Use Session Buddy when you want to save and restore whole sessions, every window at once, the way they were.
Side by side
| OneTab | Session Buddy | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Closes the tabs in a window and keeps them as a list | Saves your open windows and tabs as sessions you can reopen |
| Closes tabs to free memory | Yes, that’s the main job | Optional; it mostly saves what’s open |
| Organizing | Groups by date, with folders and notes since version 2 | Named collections you can search |
| Account | No (optional encrypted sync in version 2) | No |
| Where data lives | The extension, on your computer | The extension, on your computer |
| Export | “Export URLs” text: one URL and title per line | JSON, CSV and text formats, plus backups |
| Users and rating (October 2026) | 2 million; 3.8 stars from about 14,600 ratings | 1 million; 3.3 stars from about 25,100 ratings |
| Price | Free | Free |
Where OneTab is better
- Speed: one click and the window is a list. Nothing to name or file.
- Memory: it closes the tabs it saves, which frees what they were using.
Where Session Buddy is better
- Whole sessions: it captures every window, so you can bring back a full working setup after a restart or a crash.
- Finding things: collections are named and searchable, which beats a long list sorted by date.
- Exports: its JSON and CSV formats are complete enough to move to another tool.
Recent changes worth knowing
OneTab moved to a rewritten version 2 around March 2026, adding folders, tasks, notes and optional encrypted sync. Its own troubleshooting page says some existing tabs may not show up after the update and very large lists can time out while moving to the new database. Session Buddy’s last update was version 4.1.2 in April 2026; reviews from September 2026 mention the toolbar icon not responding and backups not running. Both dropped in the store’s ratings in October 2026, when the Chrome Web Store started weighting recent reviews.
The lesson for either: keep an export. Our free converters turn a OneTab export or a Session Buddy export into an ordinary bookmarks file.
A third option
If what you really want is for saved tabs to turn into something you’ll find again, Stackboard (ours) saves a window as ordinary Chrome bookmarks, one stack per tab group, and lays them out on your new tab page. No account, free and open source; Chrome sync carries the bookmarks and they stay if you uninstall.
Questions
Is OneTab or Session Buddy better for saving memory?
OneTab, because closing tabs is its main job. Session Buddy can close tabs too, but it’s built around saving sessions.
Can I move from OneTab to Session Buddy?
There’s no direct path. Convert your OneTab export into a bookmarks file with our converter, import it into Chrome, open the folders and save them as sessions.
Do they sync between computers?
Session Buddy keeps data on the computer. OneTab version 2 offers optional encrypted sync; otherwise both rely on exports to move between computers.
Try Stackboard
A free Chrome extension that turns your new tab into a board of your own bookmarks. No account, nothing leaves your browser.
Add to Chrome, it’s free