An agent inside the browser you have

BrowserOS neo vs Claude for Chrome

The extension asks nothing of you: same Chrome, same logins, same profile. That is its biggest advantage and its main constraint.

Claude for Chrome — Anthropic also call it Claude in Chrome — puts Claude in a side panel beside the page you are on, using your existing Chrome profile. It opens its own task tabs in a designated group, asks permission site by site, and connects to Claude Code, Cowork and Claude Desktop. It comes with Anthropic’s paid plans.

BrowserOS neo is a separate browser. Import your Chrome logins once, and any agent that speaks MCP works in its own tabs while your main browser stays yours.

[ 01 ]

The short version

Choose BrowserOS neo when

You use more than one agent, or expect to. neo works with any MCP agent.
You want agents out of your own window, in a browser of their own.
You want several agents running at once on different tasks.
You want it open source and local, free, with no subscription.

Choose Claude for Chrome when

Claude is your agent and you do not plan to change.
You genuinely do not want a second browser on your machine.
You want per-site permission prompts from the vendor who built the model.
You already pay for a Claude plan, so it costs nothing more.

[ 02 ]

Side by side

BrowserOS neo compared with Claude for Chrome, row by row.
Dimension	BrowserOS neo	Claude for Chrome
What you install	BrowserOS neoA browser, alongside the one you already use.	Claude for ChromeA Chrome extension. No new browser.
Which agents work with it	BrowserOS neoAny MCP agent — Claude Code, Cowork, Codex, Cursor, Zed, Copilot and more.	Claude for ChromeClaude.
Whose window it uses	BrowserOS neoA separate application. Agent tabs live in another browser entirely.	Claude for ChromeYour Chrome. It opens its own task tabs and groups them, so it is not seizing the tab you are reading — but it is still your window and your profile.
Your logins	BrowserOS neoImported from Chrome in one click at setup.	Claude for ChromeAlready there. It is your Chrome profile.
Several at once	BrowserOS neoYes. Each agent gets its own set of tabs, tracked separately.	Claude for ChromeOne assistant, though it handles multi-tab, background and scheduled work inside that profile.
Permission model	BrowserOS neoThe browser itself is the boundary. You choose what you sign it into.	Claude for ChromeFiner-grained than ours: per-site permissions, Manual, Auto and Skip modes, protected and prohibited actions, admin allowlists on Team and Enterprise.
Reviewing what happened	BrowserOS neoEvery session saved automatically as a scrubbable video, plus a live view.	Claude for ChromeYou watch it in your own browser; permission history is kept, and Claude Code can optionally record a task as a GIF.
Price and source	BrowserOS neoFree and open source. Bring your own model keys.	Claude for ChromeIncluded with Anthropic’s paid plans and drawing on their shared usage limits. We could not find a public source repository.

The extension puts Claude in the window you are already in, which is the shortest path to a browsing agent. For one person asking one model about the page in front of them, that is hard to beat.

It is also the ceiling. One vendor’s agent, one profile, one window, no record afterwards. Every limit on that list follows from borrowing the browser you are using instead of giving agents one of their own, which is the thing neo changes.

[ 03 ]

Your browser stops being the bottleneck.

The extension can only be as good as the arrangement it depends on: one vendor’s agent, in the window you are using, one task at a time, sharing the tabs you have open.

neo removes each of those limits. Any MCP agent, Claude Code included, in a browser of its own, several at once in their own tabs, with a replay of every session. Your window stays yours, and an agent cannot close what you are working on.

If Claude is the only agent you will ever use and one browser is all you want, the extension is enough. The moment a second agent or a second task appears, it stops being the shape of the problem.

[ 04 ]

Common questions

Does BrowserOS neo work with Claude?

Yes. Claude Code and Claude Cowork both connect to BrowserOS neo over MCP with a one-click install, as do Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Zed and GitHub Copilot. Choosing neo does not mean giving up Claude.

Do I have to give up Chrome to use BrowserOS neo?

No. It is a secondary browser that runs beside your main one. Your agents browse in neo with your imported logins; you keep using Chrome for your own work.

Is Claude for Chrome free?

It is included with Anthropic’s paid plans — Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise — rather than sold separately, and browser work draws on that plan’s shared usage limits. BrowserOS neo is free and open source.

Which is safer against prompt injection?

Neither is safe, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. Anthropic publishes its mitigations and remaining risk openly, and ships classifiers and site-category blocks we do not have. neo keeps agents in a separate browser and records every session, which helps you spot a bad run rather than prevent one.

[ 05 ]

Check it yourself

Every claim about Claude for Chrome here was read off these pages on 4 August 2026. If something has gone stale, tell us.

What we could not confirm

Anthropic documents access on all paid plans, but we could not confirm an extension-specific region list.
We could not find a public source repository, so we say that rather than calling it closed source.

[ 06 ]

Other comparisons

Give your agent a browser it can sign into.

Free, open source, and it sits beside the browser you already use.