Disclosure first: this comparison is published by the team behind Blackmount, so read it with that in mind. We have kept every claim about Session Buddy to what its current release actually does.
Session Buddy has about 1 million users and a reputation it deserves. It is fast, free, local-first, and it has been the default answer for "how do I save these tabs in Chrome" for over a decade. Blackmount is a newer take on the same job with a different center of gravity: sessions that live in the cloud and follow you between browsers and devices. This post is about which of those two shapes fits how you actually work.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Where data lives | Cloud sync | Browsers | Autosave | Notes & voice | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blackmount | Cloud, with local Guest Mode | Yes | 6 browsers + iPhone | On save | Yes | Free / $0.99 mo |
| Session Buddy | Local browser storage | Not shipped | Chrome (officially supported) | Crash recovery | — | Currently free |
What Session Buddy does better than we do
Start with the part we cannot beat: simplicity. Session Buddy opens instantly, shows you every window and tab in one dense, sortable view, and lets you search across saved collections without a single onboarding screen. It is free today, with no tier to upgrade to, and it has been stable for years — that track record is worth something real.
It is also genuinely private by construction. Nothing leaves your machine, because there is nowhere for it to go. And it has crash-recovery autosave: if Chrome dies or the machine reboots unexpectedly, Session Buddy has a snapshot of what was open. Named collections are still something you save deliberately, but you are not unprotected between saves. If you work in one Chrome profile on one computer, that combination is hard to improve on.
The three gaps people hit
The first is cloud sync. As of v4.1.x, sync and cloud backup are on the roadmap but not shipped, so a session saved on your desktop stays on your desktop. Getting it to a laptop means exporting a file and importing it on the other side, every time. That friction is the whole reason we built what we built.
The second is browser reach. Chrome is the officially supported browser; it also runs on Chromium browsers such as Brave, and the publisher has discussed Edge compatibility. What you will not find is Firefox support or anything on your phone. Blackmount runs on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, and iPhone, and a session saved in any of them restores in any other.
The third is context. Session Buddy saves titles and URLs. It does not hold a note explaining why those tabs were open, and it will not preserve Chrome tab groups through a restore. Come back to a 40-tab collection after a month and you are reconstructing your own reasoning from link text.
Where Blackmount is different
Blackmount saves the current window in one click, then syncs it. That is the headline difference and it is the only one that changes your day structurally: the research you did at work is on the laptop at home without you thinking about it, and it survives a browser reinstall or a dead machine because the copy of record is not on that machine. If you want no account at all, Guest Mode saves locally and works fully offline, the same way Session Buddy does.
On top of that, sessions can carry a text note or a voice note — "the pricing page is the one that matters, ignore the rest" spoken in fifteen seconds beats any filename. Blackmount also captures AI chats, so the Claude or ChatGPT conversation that generated your reading list is stored next to the reading list, and search covers both.
The honest counterweight: unlimited sync is paid, at $0.99/mo for Pro, with a free account offering sync within limits. Session Buddy currently costs nothing — though its publisher has said premium cloud storage is anticipated, so "free" is the present tense, not a promise. If you do not need sync, you are paying for capability you will not use.
The short version
- One Chrome profile, one computer, no phone need → stay on Session Buddy. It is free today and very good.
- Sessions must reach Firefox, your phone, or another device → Blackmount.
- You want notes, voice, and captured AI chats attached to sessions → Blackmount.
- Hard requirement of zero cloud storage → Session Buddy, or Blackmount in Guest Mode.
Switching costs you nothing to test: installing Blackmount does not touch your existing Session Buddy collections. If you want the wider field rather than just these two, see Session Buddy alternatives for 2026 and the best tab managers of 2026.
Spotted an inaccuracy, or has Session Buddy shipped sync since we last checked? Email support@blackmount.ai — we update this post as tools ship new versions.