HoloTab Now Free: The Shocking Rise of an AI Agent That Controls Chrome
機械翻訳 / Machine-translated
A
AI Friends
2026年4月26日・22分で読める
機械翻訳 / Machine-translated
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"I'm so swamped with the same research tasks every day that I can't get to my actual work" — does that sound familiar? On April 15, 2026, an AI tool called "HoloTab" arrived as the solution — and it's completely free.
Developed by French AI startup H Company, it's a Chrome extension that makes your browser move automatically just by saying something like "compare all the prices on this site" — an experience that feels straight out of a sci-fi film.
In this article, we'll walk you through HoloTab's capabilities, how it differs from ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity Comet, and what it means for business professionals in Japan.
Let's start with the basics. HoloTab is an extension for Google Chrome — the world's most popular browser — that acts as an AI assistant capable of viewing your screen and performing clicks and inputs on its own.
While ChatGPT and Claude are "conversation experts" that simply answer questions, HoloTab is more like a "capable personal assistant" that follows instructions and gets things done. Imagine telling a new employee, "Look up the price of these earphones on Rakuten, Amazon, and Yahoo! Shopping, then put it all in a table" — and they quietly go off and do it. That's the kind of experience HoloTab offers.
Under the hood runs "Holo3," H Company's latest model announced on March 31, 2026.
It achieved 78.85% on "OSWorld-Verified," an international benchmark measuring desktop operation performance — an industry SOTA (all-time high) score.
Remarkably, it delivers performance comparable to large-scale models like OpenAI's GPT-5.4 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6, at one-tenth of the cost.
HoloTab is available for anyone to install for free from the Chrome Web Store.
No credit card registration or subscription is required — the barrier to "just try it out" is zero.
H Company has publicly stated its design philosophy: "We want to bring AI agents to people without technical backgrounds."
HoloTab's biggest highlight is a feature called "Routine" — a nearly unique capability not found in other AI browsers.
Using it is surprisingly simple.
Press the "Start Recording" button and carry out your usual workflow as you normally would.
HoloTab learns your on-screen actions and voice narration in real time, so the next time you say "do that routine," it reproduces everything for you.
It's like showing a junior colleague a recipe once and having them be able to cook it on their own from then on.
Aさん (32), a sales rep at a small home appliance manufacturer, used to spend every morning checking over 20 websites to track competitor product prices.
Once they recorded the process for HoloTab, from the next day all it took was "do the same thing as yesterday" — and research results from 20 tabs were automatically compiled into a spreadsheet.
A task that used to take two hours now takes just ten minutes.
Bさん (28), a recruiter in the staffing industry, was spending every day browsing LinkedIn, Wantedly, Green, and Indeed to find engineer candidates — and was exhausted by the manual task of listing eligible candidates.
With HoloTab, once you set the filter conditions and the target spreadsheet, a scheduled run delivers an up-to-date list every morning at 8:00 AM.
HoloTab also supports voice input.
While working from home, just murmuring "go ahead and order toilet paper from Amazon again" is enough to trigger the order process.
It's far more capable than a smart speaker, handling even complex purchases that require navigating a screen.
Competition among AI browsers and AI agents heated up dramatically in the second half of 2025. Let's compare the three major players.
An AI-dedicated browser announced by OpenAI on October 21, 2025.
It runs as a standalone app as an alternative to Chrome, and using Agent Mode requires ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) or Pro ($200/month).
Currently macOS only, with Windows and iOS versions rolling out later.
Seamless for heavy ChatGPT users, but there's a paywall.
A search-focused AI browser launched in July 2025.
It started at $200/month but went completely free in October 2025.
Its strongest suit is source citation and research work.
Offers the flexibility to switch between GPT, Claude, and Perplexity's own models.
Its major advantage is that it installs as a Chrome extension on top of your existing browser.
No need to switch browsers like with Atlas, and unlike Comet, it differentiates itself with the "record and automate" Routine feature.
Completely free with no additional charges, and its European-origin design emphasizes data sovereignty.
For research-heavy work, go with Comet. If you're already paying for ChatGPT, Atlas is seamless. For automating repetitive tasks, HoloTab is the clear winner. All three are free to try, so the smart strategy is to install all of them and compare.
H Company may not be a household name, but it's actually one of the most closely watched startups in the European AI industry.
H Company is headquartered in Paris, France, and was founded in 2023.
It was launched by founder Charles Kantor, with former Google DeepMind researchers on board.
The "H" in the company name reportedly stands for "Human," embodying the philosophy that "AI is a tool for augmenting human capability."
In May 2024, H Company raised $220 million (approximately ¥22 billion) in seed funding.
Investors include a remarkable lineup: Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO), Amazon, Samsung, and UiPath.
A seed round of this size is among the largest in European AI history, earning the company attention as Europe's top AI prospect after Mistral AI.
H Company's focus area is "Computer-Use AI."
While ChatGPT and Claude aim to be "smart conversation partners," H Company aims to build "an assistant that operates your PC on your behalf."
Think less cooking researcher, more cooking robot.
Many of Japan's small and medium-sized businesses struggle with chronic staffing shortages. With HoloTab, routine administrative tasks — order processing, inventory reconciliation, invoice downloads — can be automated at zero monthly cost, potentially eliminating over ¥1 million per year in RPA (robotic process automation) tool expenses.
For roles like marketer, journalist, or consultant — where web research makes up 90% of daily work — significant time savings are expected. That said, demand for simple information-gathering tasks may decline, making it increasingly important for humans to differentiate through added value in analysis and strategic planning.
For corporate use, caution is needed around "AI autonomously logging into sites and handling data."
In financial institutions and healthcare facilities, IT departments will likely need to move quickly to establish HoloTab usage policies.
While the design is GDPR-compliant by European standards, each organization should verify alignment with Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information.
A. Basically, yes.
The Holo3 model supports multiple languages and can handle both operating Japanese-language websites and receiving instructions in Japanese.
However, accuracy may not be as high as in English, and for complex instructions, entering them in English often yields more stable results.
A. As of now (April 2026), it is completely free, though the API version "Holo Models API" is a paid offering. No plans to charge for personal use of HoloTab (the Chrome extension) have been announced, but it's worth expecting the possibility that advanced features for enterprise users may become paid in the future.
A. It depends on your use case.
If you're already paying for ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), Atlas is seamless.
If you want to start for free, don't want to give up Chrome, or want to automate repetitive tasks, go with HoloTab.
Since both are free to try, using them side by side is also recommended.
A. Because it runs as a Chrome extension, it requires permission to access information on the sites you're browsing.
When using it for online banking or business systems, it's wise to enable two-factor authentication and handle sensitive operations manually.
Before deploying it in a corporate setting, make sure to go through a review by your information security department.
A. At this time, it is Chrome-exclusive.
Edge (Microsoft) may work since it's Chromium-based, but Safari and Firefox are not supported.
Since Chrome holds roughly 65% of the global browser market share, the vast majority of users should be able to use it right away.
A. For web-based workflows, HoloTab is a sufficient replacement.
However, for operating desktop applications or processing tasks directly tied to business systems, existing RPA tools still hold an advantage in track record and reliability.
A practical division of labor would be: "Web-only tasks go to HoloTab; core system integrations stay with existing RPA."
We've moved from the era of AI that writes text to the era of AI that actually operates your PC.
HoloTab is a groundbreaking tool that makes the "AI assistant" experience dramatically more accessible.
The window to try it completely free may not last forever, so if web-based tasks are eating up your time, we strongly encourage you to experience it for yourself.
For Japan's small and medium-sized businesses and sole proprietors, the moment has arrived to gain a "capable administrative assistant at ¥0 per month."
This article is a cross-post from AI Friends.
