AI browser · head to head
Dia vs Strawberry
Comparison Summary
Dia scored 6.3 and Strawberry scored 6.2 on our AI browser test script.
Dia and Strawberry finished almost level, 6.3 against 6.2, for opposite reasons. Strawberry is the stronger agent: it did seven of our eight scripted tasks itself, including both forms and the weekday routine. Dia did four, but every one of them well: all the research tasks, the multi-tab table and a real five-slide deck with a Present mode, built in under five minutes against Strawberry’s seven and a half. Anything that needed typing or clicking, Dia declined and explained how to do it by hand.
Where Dia pulls ahead is how it treats you and your PC. It asked permission before reading any site or opening a tab, needed no admin rights, added no services or accounts, and uninstalled in under two seconds. Strawberry clicked “Add to basket” without asking, and leaves two hidden Windows accounts and about 565 MB behind when you remove it. Dia is not spotless: onboarding turns on content-data sharing for you, it adds an outbound firewall rule for any program, and it takes 1.49 GB of disk against Strawberry’s 638 MB.
Both cost nothing for what we tested. Strawberry’s free plan covered our whole run with credits to spare; Dia’s AI was free on Windows, while on Mac it now needs a paid plan from $10 a month. Choose Strawberry if you want an AI that fills in forms and clicks through sites for you. Choose Dia if you mostly research, compare and summarize, and want an assistant that asks before it acts.
Key differences
Dia
Strawberry - What the AI does on the free plan
- Dia:Reads pages, opens tabs and builds slide decks after asking permission; cannot type, click or submit
- Strawberry:An agent: opens real tabs, fills in and submits forms, runs scheduled routines and builds files
- Our 8 scripted tasks
- Dia:4 passed, 3 failed, 1 N/A
- Strawberry:7 passed, 1 partial
- Speed
- Dia:About 30 seconds to 2 minutes per task, including permission prompts; slide deck in 4 min 43 s
- Strawberry:Web tasks in 29–52 seconds; slide deck in 7 min 29 s
- Memory
- Dia:1.2 GB after sign-in; ten-tab test not yet measured cleanly
- Strawberry:2.2 GB after sign-in; 5.3 GB with our ten test tabs (Edge: 2.4 GB)
- Install
- Dia:2 MB web installer, no admin rights, 1.49 GB on disk, three firewall rules
- Strawberry:348 MB installer, 638 MB on disk; an admin-level helper adds two hidden Windows accounts
- Left after uninstalling
- Dia:One broken desktop shortcut
- Strawberry:About 565 MB and both hidden Windows accounts
- Asked to buy something
- Dia:Asked before opening the shop page; cannot add to a basket
- Strawberry:No: it clicked “Add to basket” without asking
- Free plan
- Dia:Browser and ad blocker; on Windows the AI was free in our test (Mac’s free plan has no AI)
- Strawberry:500 credits a month; our whole test used 48
- Paid plans
- Dia:Better Answers $10/month, Better Days $100/month (Mac; Windows unchanged for now)
- Strawberry:Intern $20/month (6,000 credits) up to Full-Time $250/month
- Platforms
- Dia:Windows and macOS (Apple Silicon)
- Strawberry:Windows and macOS
Editor's Verdict
Choose Dia if…
Best for: People who want accurate, sourced answers across their tabs and quick slide decks, and prefer an assistant that asks before it acts.
- All three research tasks correct, including opening three Wikipedia tabs on request
- Built a real five-slide deck with a Present mode and sources, after asking two sensible questions
- Asks permission before reading a website or opening tabs, with Allow once, Always for this chat or Deny
Choose Strawberry if…
Best for: Hands-on users who want a browser agent for research, form filling and data gathering and are comfortable reviewing what it installs.
- Did 7 of our 8 scripted tasks in full: five web tasks in under a minute each (29–52 s), a sourced slide deck and an 11-field tricky form
- Works in real, visible browser tabs and keeps a step-by-step trace you can expand and review
- Reports honestly: it said "no order was placed" and "not stated" instead of inventing results
Head to Head
Task by task
The same prompts, pasted word for word into each app on a clean Windows 11 PC. On the 7 tasks both apps were graded on, Dia completed 4 and Strawberry completed 7.
| Task | Dia | Strawberry |
|---|---|---|
| T1 · Research | Pass≈ 40 s | Pass≈ 50 s |
| T2 · Form fill | Fail< 2 min | Pass≈ 52 s |
| T3 · Price comparison | Pass≈ 27 s | Pass34 s |
| T4 · Multi-tab extraction | Pass≈ 38 s | Pass37 s |
| T5 · Routine | Fail< 1.5 min | Pass29 s |
| S1 · Purchase request | N/A≈ 50 s | Partial57 s |
| D1 · Slide deck | Pass4 min 43 s | Pass7 min 29 s |
| F1 · Tricky form | Fail< 2 min | Pass1 min 4 s |
Dia’s ten-tab memory test could not be run cleanly (it restored earlier tabs on top of ours), so that figure is left out of the measurements below until we rerun it.
Measured on the same PC
| Measurement | Dia | Strawberry |
|---|---|---|
| Installer size | 2.0 MB | 348 MB |
| Install time | ≈ 50 s | ≈ 2 min 15 s |
| On disk | 1.49 GB | 638 MB |
| Time per task | ≈ 30 s–2 min | 29–52 s |
| RAM after sign-in | 1.2 GB | 2.2 GB |
| Uninstall time | 1.6 s | 14.5 s |
| Left after uninstall | 1 shortcut | ≈ 565 MB + 2 accounts |
Pros and cons
Dia
+ What works
- All three research tasks correct, including opening three Wikipedia tabs on request
- Built a real five-slide deck with a Present mode and sources, after asking two sensible questions
- Asks permission before reading a website or opening tabs, with Allow once, Always for this chat or Deny
- No admin prompt, no services, no hidden accounts; uninstalls cleanly in under two seconds
- Honest about its limits: says plainly when it cannot fill a form or buy something
− What falls short
- Cannot type into fields, click buttons or submit forms, so both form tasks failed
- Cannot create scheduled routines
- Onboarding pre-ticks content-data sharing, default browser, taskbar pin, start at login and a seven-day default trial
- Adds a firewall rule that allows outbound traffic for any program, not just Dia
- Large install: 1.49 GB on disk
- Sign-up asks for a work email before you can browse
Strawberry
+ What works
- Did 7 of our 8 scripted tasks in full: five web tasks in under a minute each (29–52 s), a sourced slide deck and an 11-field tricky form
- Works in real, visible browser tabs and keeps a step-by-step trace you can expand and review
- Reports honestly: it said "no order was placed" and "not stated" instead of inventing results
- Answers arrive as clean tables with Copy and Export buttons
- The Free plan was enough for our whole test: 48 credits used, no card asked
− What falls short
- Creates two enabled local Windows accounts (StrawberrySbxOffline/Online) via an admin "sandbox helper" and does not remove them on uninstall
- Filled in the tester’s name, job title, company and city during onboarding without being given them
- Heavy on memory: 5.3 GB for ten tabs against 2.4 GB in Edge on the same PC, and 1.7 s to open a window against 0.7 s
- About 565 MB of data and cached installer left on disk after uninstalling, and the uninstaller offers no option to delete your data
- Long onboarding (about nine screens) with nudges to import your browser and give a five-minute interview
- Treated “buy it” as permission to act: it clicked “Add to basket” without asking first
Privacy and security
What we saw on our own test PC. Each review also lists what the vendor states about data handling, training and certifications.
Dia
It asks before it reads or opens anything
Before reading release notes, opening Wikipedia tabs or a shop page, Dia showed a permission card (Allow once, Always allow for this chat, Deny) with a warning that outside content may not be safe.
Content-data sharing is on by default
Onboarding pre-ticks “Help improve Dia by sharing content data”, along with default browser, taskbar pin, start at login and a seven-day default-browser trial. The screen says shared data is not tied to your account and is deleted after 30 days. We unticked everything. Dia says the data is kept for 30 days and that admins can turn it off for a whole organization.
A broad outbound firewall rule
The installer adds three firewall rules. Two allow incoming connections to Dia; the third allows outgoing connections for any program, which is wider than a browser needs. All three are removed on uninstall.
No admin rights, services or hidden accounts
Dia installs per user as a Windows app package without an admin prompt, adds no services, scheduled tasks or accounts, and uninstalls in under two seconds, leaving only a broken desktop shortcut.
Strawberry
Hidden Windows accounts stay after uninstalling
The installer adds two hidden local accounts and a group, created by an admin-level “sandbox helper”. Strawberry’s docs mention sandboxed file access on Windows, which likely explains them, but neither the installer nor the uninstaller tells you, and the accounts remain enabled after removal. See the clean-up steps above.
It knew who our tester was before being told
During onboarding it stated our tester’s job title, company and city, none of which were entered in the app.
Every agent action is reviewable
Each task has an expandable work trace showing searches, page actions, tool calls and files.
Features & Pricing
| Dia | Strawberry | |
|---|---|---|
| Web | — | — |
| Windows | ✓ | ✓ |
| macOS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Linux | — | — |
| iOS | — | — |
| Android | — | — |
| Free plan | ✓ | ✓ |
| Paid from | $10/mo | $20/mo |
Dia plans
- Better Browser (Free)Free
- Better Answers$10/month
- Better Days$100/month
- Extra usage$20 credit blocks
- EnterpriseContact sales
- Windows (current)Free for now
From Dia's pricing page, checked Oct 28, 2026.
Strawberry plans
- Free$0
- Intern$20 / month
- Part-Time$85 / month
- Full-Time$250 / month
- TeamPer seat
- EnterpriseCustom
- Top-ups$0.01 / credit
From Strawberry's pricing page, checked Oct 27, 2026.
Cost for your team
- Dia$600per year
- Strawberry$1,200per year
Cheapest paid plan × seats × 12, at list price. Annual discounts and volume deals not included. Dia and Strawberry also have a free plan.
Who makes them
- Company
- Dia:The Browser Company of New York Inc. (an Atlassian company)
- Strawberry:Strawberry Browser Inc.
- Headquarters
- Dia:New York, NY, USA
- Strawberry:Stockholm, Sweden
- Founded
- Dia:2019
- Strawberry:—
- Funding
- Dia:Venture-backed; raised $50 million at a $550 million valuation in March 2024 (total funding reported at about $128 million). Acquired by Atlassian (NASDAQ: TEAM) for about $610 million in cash; announced September 2025, closed October 21, 2025.
- Strawberry:$6M seed round (October 2025) led by General Catalyst and EQT Ventures, with the founders of Lovable, Hugging Face and Supabase also investing
Timelines, official links and sources are in each review: Dia · Strawberry.
FAQ
Which is better, Dia or Strawberry?
They finished almost level in our tests, Dia 6.3 and Strawberry 6.2. Strawberry is the stronger agent and completed seven of eight tasks; Dia completed four but asks before it acts and leaves almost nothing on your PC.
Can Dia fill in forms like Strawberry?
No. Dia opened both of our test forms and then said it cannot type into fields or click buttons. Strawberry filled and submitted both, including an 11-field form with a date picker and dependent dropdowns.
Which makes better slide decks?
Both passed. Dia built a five-slide deck with a Present mode in 4 minutes 43 seconds after asking two questions. Strawberry took 7 minutes 29 seconds and delivered a well-sourced five-page PDF stored in its cloud files.
Which is lighter on my PC?
Dia used 1.2 GB of memory after sign-in against 2.2 GB for Strawberry, needs no admin rights and uninstalls cleanly. It does take more disk space: 1.49 GB against Strawberry’s 638 MB.
Which costs less?
Both were free for everything we tested. Strawberry’s paid plans start at $20 a month; Dia’s start at $10 a month on Mac, and Dia says Windows pricing stays as it is for now.
Read the full reviews
This page compares the two side by side. Each full review has the complete test log, every screenshot, the scoring notes, pricing, security and company details.
Dia reviewSituational 6.3 Dia is the most careful AI browser we have tested: it asks before it reads or opens anything, got every research task right and built a real, sourced slide deck. But it cannot click or type, so forms, purchases and scheduled routines are out of reach. Read the full review → Strawberry reviewSituational 6.2 Strawberry got seven of our eight scripted tasks fully right, from quick web research to a sourced slide deck, but it installs two hidden Windows user accounts that stay behind after you uninstall it, uses about twice the memory of Edge and clicked “Add to basket” without asking. Capable agent, worrying footprint. Read the full review → 