Toby saves tabs. TulipLot renders sites live. That's the whole distinction, and it's worth stating before anything else, because most people searching "tuliplot vs toby" aren't sure yet which category they actually need.
Toby is a bookmarking-and-collections tool: you save a tab's link into Toby, close the tab, and reopen the saved link later when you want it again. TulipLot is a rendering tool: it keeps up to six real, interactive sites open at once, all the time, in a fixed grid, with nothing to reopen because nothing closed in the first place. Want to stash forty research links and come back to them next week? Toby does that; TulipLot doesn't do it at all. Want your inbox, calendar, and project board visibly live at the same time, no switching? That's TulipLot's job, and Toby doesn't do that either.
What Toby does well
Toby is a genuinely good tool for what it's built to do: saving and organizing browser tabs and links into collections so you can find them again later. ("Stop Drowning in Tabs" is their own pitch, and it's an honest one.) Toby's free Starter plan lets you save and manage up to 60 tabs across all your collections, with no limit on how many members can join the account — a free Toby workspace supports a whole team, not just one person.
If a session regularly ends with thirty open tabs you want captured into collections instead of lost the moment the browser closes, Toby solves that cleanly, and TulipLot isn't a substitute for it. TulipLot has no concept of "saved for later" at all; a cell only ever shows what's live right now, not a link to something you'll open eventually.
What TulipLot does differently
TulipLot doesn't save anything for later, it renders. A TulipLot dashboard is a fixed 3×2 grid, six cells, and whatever sits in a cell is a live, interactive version of that site: an inbox showing new mail as it arrives, a project board updating as teammates move cards, a calendar you click straight into, not a link to any of those things. Free accounts get five usable cells plus one ad cell fixed in the bottom-right slot; Premium drops the ad and unlocks all six for $4 a month. You can also try it before creating an account: two live cells load immediately at /try, saved to that browser only, and they carry into your dashboard automatically if you sign up later.
Every cell fills from the built-in catalog or from any HTTPS URL you paste in yourself, and the free TulipLot Companion, a Chrome extension, unlocks embedding for many sites that would otherwise refuse to load in a frame. Worth saying plainly, though: not every site can be embedded this way. A handful of major login-gated services, Gmail and Google Calendar among them, never allow embedding under any circumstances, Companion or not, and become one-click launchers instead: a cell you click to open the site in its own tab rather than seeing it live inline. That's a real limitation, and it's the tradeoff for rendering actual interactive sites instead of storing links to them.
Price, single-user
Toby's free Starter plan is $0 with up to 60 saved tabs across your collections. Productivity is $6 USD per member per month, or $4.50 per member per month billed yearly ($54/year), and adds unlimited saved tabs, advanced search, and duplicate removal. Team is $10 USD per member per month, or $8 billed yearly ($96/year), and adds SSO, priority support, and centralized billing. Toby prices per member because it's built as a collaboration tool: the cost scales with how many teammates share your collections.
TulipLot prices per person, not per seat, since a TulipLot dashboard has no team or collections concept the way Toby does. You can try it with no account, move to a free account with five usable cells and one ad, or go Premium for all six cells with zero ads at $4 a month. Compared single-user to single-user: one person on Toby's Productivity tier pays $4.50–$6 a month, and one person on TulipLot Premium pays $4 a month.
TulipLot vs Toby at a glance
| Toby | TulipLot | |
|---|---|---|
| What it stores | Links to tabs, saved into collections | Nothing — cells render live sites, not saved links |
| Sites visible at once | None; Toby stores links to tabs you reopen later, not live views | Up to 6, live and simultaneous, in a fixed grid |
| Free tier ad-supported | Not described as ad-supported | Yes, one ad cell on the free plan |
| Single-user paid price | $6/mo, or $4.50/mo billed yearly ($54/yr) | $4/month |
| Team / collaboration | Yes, unlimited members even on the free Starter plan | No built-in team or collaboration features |
Which should you pick?
Pick Toby if you collect more than you use at any given moment: research links, articles to read later, a growing pile of reference tabs you'd rather have organized into collections than buried in your tab bar. The 60-tab free limit is generous for casual collecting, and Productivity removes that ceiling entirely once you outgrow it.
Pick TulipLot if the problem isn't too many tabs, it's needing a handful of specific sites open and visible at the same time, every day: an inbox, a calendar, a project board, a chat, glanced at constantly rather than reopened occasionally. If your workflow is "check five things all day" rather than "save fifty things for later," a live grid solves that in a way a saved-links tool structurally can't.
Plenty of people reasonably want both. Toby for what you're not using right now, TulipLot for what you're using constantly. They don't compete for the same job, so there's no real conflict in running both.
Questions people ask
Is TulipLot a Toby alternative?
Only if what you actually want differs from what Toby offers: sites open and live at once, instead of links saved for later. TulipLot doesn't save tabs, organize them into collections, or search across them; Toby does that well and TulipLot makes no attempt to. If your problem is losing track of dozens of tabs, Toby solves it and TulipLot won't. TulipLot fits when you want a handful of sites visibly live all the time, not when you want a place to store links for later.
What is Toby's free plan limit?
Toby's free "Starter" plan lets you save and manage up to 60 tabs across all your collections, with no cap on how many members can join the account. That 60-tab limit arrived when Toby retired its older single free plan; existing free users were moved onto the new Starter limits by 12 November 2024, according to Toby's own FAQ. Past 60 saved tabs, Toby's paid Productivity plan removes the limit entirely.
Can I use TulipLot without signing up?
Yes. The try page gives you two live cells with no account required: pick a site from the catalog or paste any HTTPS URL, and it loads the same way a Free or Premium cell would. Those two cells stay saved to that browser only; creating a free account carries them into your dashboard and raises you to five usable cells.
If you save more than you use, Toby is the better tool, plain and simple. If you want a handful of sites live and visible all day instead, try TulipLot with no account, or see exactly what changes between Free and Premium before deciding.