A free Speed Dial alternative built from your own bookmarks

Updated 18 October 2026

If you want a speed dial with no subscription, use your Chrome bookmarks as the dial: Stackboard lays them out as tiles on your new tab page for free, and Chrome sync carries them to every computer you sign in on. Speed Dial 2 still does things Stackboard doesn’t, such as page thumbnails and, on Pro, a phone app, so check the list below before you switch.

What Speed Dial 2 does well

Speed Dial 2 gives you a grid of your favorite sites, sorted into groups, with themes, search, Focus Mode and a sidebar that shows your browser bookmarks and recently closed tabs. Free users keep everything on their own computer, and anyone can export their dials, groups and settings to a JSON file.

Pro costs $12 a year (October 2026). It adds sync between devices, automatic daily backups, premium backgrounds and fonts, custom thumbnails, group sharing and the mobile app.

FVD Speed Dial is the bigger of the two, with about 500,000 users and 4.4 stars from about 117,800 ratings (October 2026). Its store listing says the free version shows sponsored speed dial tiles, and premium is optional.

What people switch over

Speed Dial 2 had about 300,000 users and 2.2 stars from about 7,700 ratings in October 2026, down from 4.1 once the Chrome Web Store started giving recent reviews more weight. Seven of its ten most recent reviews gave one to three stars. Reviewers said standard features had moved into the subscription, that Pro features didn’t turn on after they paid, and that support didn’t reply.

Speed Dial 2 also keeps your dials inside the extension, apart from Chrome’s bookmarks. They don’t appear in the Bookmark Manager, and they reach your other computers through Pro sync or an export.

Speed Dial 2 and Stackboard side by side

When Speed Dial 2 or FVD is the better pick

If you want page thumbnails, the same dials on your phone, Focus Mode or groups you can share, Speed Dial 2 covers all of it, and $12 a year is a small cost if it works well for you. If you like FVD Speed Dial and don’t mind sponsored tiles, it has far more ratings than Speed Dial 2 and a 4.4 average. Stackboard is for people who want their sites kept as plain Chrome bookmarks that sync for free and stay put if the extension goes away.

Move your dials to Stackboard

1. Start with what Chrome already has. In Stackboard’s Settings, choose Copy from Chrome bookmarks. Your bookmarks bar becomes a space with one stack per folder, and the originals stay where they are. Other ways to get bookmarks onto the new tab are in showing bookmarks on Chrome’s new tab.
2. Try your Speed Dial 2 export. Export your dials to JSON, then drop the file into our session export converter. It reads any JSON file that lists links with a url field and shows what it found before you download anything. If your dials show up, download the Stackboard backup (.json) and import it under Settings, Backup, Import JSON.
3. Add the rest by hand. Open a site and save it from the Stackboard toolbar popup straight into a stack.

If you’d like to stay with a speed dial, Speed Dial 2 offers its own converter for people coming from FVD Speed Dial.