Frequently asked questions.

Zeed is a Chromium-based AI browser (a fork of Chromium 149) built and distributed by EFG Technologies Inc. (Tokyo, Japan). It reasons over your tabs, memory, and reading context through a sidebar AI, and is designed so that personal data never leaves your device. The AI runs on your own OpenRouter API key — you pay the provider directly. Models are currently fixed (GLM-5.1 for chat, Perplexity Sonar for web search).

Zeed is built by subtraction: Chromium plus a sidebar AI, minus everything else. No crypto wallet, no news feed, no ads, no sponsored shortcuts. Because it is a Chromium fork rather than an extension, the sidebar, vertical tabs, and AI integration are wired into the browser itself. Turn the AI off and you’re running plain Chromium.

Three things. (1) Your data stays on your device by design — others stream to their AI cloud. (2) The AI runs on your own OpenRouter key — you pay the provider directly, with no markup (models are currently fixed: GLM-5.1 chat, Sonar search). (3) Turn AI off and Zeed is just Chromium, so you can leave without friction. There is also a platform difference: Comet, Atlas, Dia, and Fellou are Mac-first with no native Linux build, while Zeed ships for Linux first.

Yes — Zeed. Among AI browsers, Comet, Atlas, Dia, and Fellou do not ship native Linux builds; Zeed treats Linux (Arch, Ubuntu/Debian) as its primary platform, with both Wayland and X11 supported. See zeed.run/linux for the distro-by-distro details.

Zeed extracts user intent, decisions, and discoveries from pages and chat, then organizes them across five layers (Profile → TabGroup → Tab → Topic → Memory). The AI reads from this instead of asking you from scratch every time. Raw logs are not retained.

Linux today (Arch via the AUR package zeed-bin, Ubuntu/Debian via .deb, and a prebuilt tarball for every other x86_64 distro), plus macOS on Apple Silicon (signed and notarized, in beta). Windows is planned. On iPhone there is Zeed Mobile, a separate WKWebView-based app currently in invite-based TestFlight beta — see zeed.run/mobile.

Arch / Manjaro: yay -S zeed-bin. Ubuntu / Debian: download the latest .deb from github.com/efg-technologies/zeed-browser-dist/releases and install with apt. Other distros: extract the tarball and run, no install step. macOS (Apple Silicon): brew install --cask efg-technologies/zeed/zeed, or the direct .dmg. On first launch, paste your OpenRouter API key.

Yes. Zeed is built on Chromium 149 and inherits its Ozone platform layer, so it runs on both Wayland and X11. On a Wayland session you can run natively by adding --ozone-platform-hint=auto (or --ozone-platform=wayland) to ~/.config/zeed-flags.conf; otherwise it runs via XWayland.

Yes. Chromium-based, so all 190,000+ Web Store extensions, bookmarks, saved passwords, and autofill carry over. Your Chrome profile is read-only — if you don’t like Zeed, go back.

Currently the models are fixed: chat and Agent run on GLM-5.1, web search on Perplexity Sonar — both through your own OpenRouter API key, so billing stays between you and OpenRouter with no markup. There is no model-picker UI today; one is under consideration, not promised. Requests go from your machine directly to OpenRouter — Zeed and the Company are not in the path.

Zeed is free, no ads. LLM usage you pay directly to the provider. Zeed takes no cut, so heavy users pay the lowest possible rate. Optional paid tiers ($5/mo+) for multi-device sync and cloud features are coming. Separately, Zeed Search — an AI search product from the same company — has a free tier (AI answers 10/day, Deep research 10/month, image search 5/day) and a Pro plan at ¥980/month with published fair-use limits instead of an “unlimited” promise, plus the Zeed Brief morning email (free tier gets a preview issue). The unit costs are public too: one Deep research run costs us about ¥4 in model and search-API fees. Quotas may be adjusted without notice as real costs change.

Any buy / send / delete / publish requires your approval — form submission, purchase, publishing, deletion, authentication, and payment all prompt before executing. Prompt-injection from hostile pages is blocked structurally. If that’s still too much, private mode disables AI entirely.

On your device only — localStorage and SQLite. Memory, history, bookmarks, chat logs never leave. Anonymous aggregate telemetry is on by default and turning it off is one click in settings (GPC / Do Not Track signals are honored automatically). Private mode disables AI entirely. Any future cloud sync will be opt-in.

Only minimal, anonymous events (install, session start, daily heartbeat, allowlisted feature counters, agent run result, crash hash, and a once-per-day feature-usage ping used for retention counts). Anonymous aggregate telemetry is on by default; one click in settings turns it off, and GPC / Do Not Track signals disable it regardless of the toggle. Detailed debug telemetry is separate and strictly opt-in (off by default). Zeed never transmits browsing URLs, page content, chat contents, Memory, bookmarks, IP addresses, or email addresses. This is enforced by an automated regression test (no_personal_data.test.ts) on every release. Full details: zeed.run/privacy.

The diff against upstream Chromium is published under MPL-2.0, and the Linux packaging (PKGBUILD, launcher, .deb tooling) is public on GitHub at efg-technologies/zeed-browser-dist. Full source disclosure is available on request to support@efg-technologies.com while the upstream fork is under review.

Zeed Browser is built and distributed by EFG Technologies Inc., based in Tokyo, Japan. Contact: support@efg-technologies.com (product) and privacy@efg-technologies.com (privacy requests).