Auto Refresh Plus Alternatives Compared
There are several good auto refresh extensions for Chrome. Here is how the popular ones compare, including where another tool does more than ours.
We make Auto Refresh Plus, so we are not neutral. To keep this fair, every figure about other extensions comes from their own Chrome Web Store listing, checked on October 28, 2026. Ratings and user counts change, so check the listing before you decide.
We compared the four extensions on the things that matter day to day: what they cost, how you set the interval, what they can do beyond reloading, and the kind of person each one suits. Feature descriptions summarise what each developer states on their listing; we have not tested every advanced feature ourselves.
At a glance
| Extension | Price | Interval type | Extra features | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auto Refresh Plus100,000+ users, 4.8★ (1.7K ratings) | Free | Fixed, in seconds | None, by design | One-click refreshing with nothing to configure |
| Tab Reloader100,000 users, 4.4★ (177 ratings) | Free | Fixed or random range | Restores jobs after restart, URL rules, schedules, custom JavaScript on reload | Power users who want rules and automation |
| Easy Auto Refresh1,000,000 users, 3.1★ (2K ratings) | Free; advanced options need registration | Fixed (random with registration) | Remembers settings per page; with registration: auto-click, text alerts, schedules | People who want monitoring features and don’t mind registering |
| Super Simple Auto Refresh5,000 users, 4.0★ (4 ratings) | Free | Presets, custom or random | Text search, countdown on the icon | Picking from ready-made presets |
Tab Reloader
Tab Reloader is the most feature-rich free option here. Its listing describes per-tab reload jobs with an optional random variation, the ability to restore reload jobs after the browser restarts, rules that start reloading automatically when a URL matches, policies that block reloading at certain times, and the option to run your own JavaScript on every reload. It is open source and also available for other browsers.
Choose Tab Reloader if you want automation: timers that come back after a restart, rules per website, or scripts that run after each reload. Choose Auto Refresh Plus if you only need a page to reload every so many seconds and would rather not learn a settings panel. Ours has one field and two buttons.
Easy Auto Refresh
Easy Auto Refresh is one of the best-known names, with around a million users. The free version reloads a page after the seconds you enter, remembers your settings for each page, keeps the page's scroll position and pauses the countdown while you type. Registering unlocks extras, including random intervals, specific times of day, automatic clicks on a button or link, and an alert with a sound when chosen text appears.
Choose Easy Auto Refresh if you want page monitoring, such as being alerted when a word appears, and are happy to register for it. Choose Auto Refresh Plus if you want everything to be free with no registration step. Its rating on the store is also notably different: 3.1 for Easy Auto Refresh against 4.8 for Auto Refresh Plus at the time of checking.
Super Simple Auto Refresh
Super Simple Auto Refresh offers ready-made interval presets, a custom interval or a random interval, a search for text on the page, and a countdown shown on the toolbar icon. It is a smaller extension with a few thousand users and only a handful of ratings so far.
Choose Super Simple Auto Refresh if you like picking from presets or want the countdown on the icon. Choose Auto Refresh Plus if you prefer typing an exact number of seconds and want an extension with a long track record and many reviews.
How to choose an auto refresh extension
Whichever extension you pick, a few questions narrow it down quickly:
- Do you only need reloading, or also monitoring? If you want to be told when a word or price appears, you need a monitoring feature. If you will watch the page yourself, a plain timer is enough and has less to go wrong.
- Should timers survive a restart? Some extensions restore reload jobs after Chrome restarts. Handy for a permanent dashboard; unnecessary if you refresh pages for an hour at a time.
- Is everything free, or are features behind registration? Check which features in the description are part of the free version.
- What do reviewers say recently? Sort the store reviews by newest. A high rating built years ago says less than what users report this month.
- Which permissions does it request, and what does its privacy policy say? The store page shows both. Extensions that do more usually need more access.
There is no single best extension, only the best fit for what you are doing. A ticket release, a wall-mounted dashboard and a job board each need something slightly different, which is why we list the strengths of each tool rather than declaring a winner.
When Auto Refresh Plus is the right choice
Auto Refresh Plus is deliberately small. It does not watch for text, click buttons or run on a schedule. In exchange:
- It is 100% free, with no account and nothing to unlock.
- Setup takes seconds: type the interval, press START.
- Every tab keeps its own timer.
- It is used by 100,000+ people and rated 4.8 out of 5 from 1.7K ratings.
If you need monitoring, alerts or automation, one of the extensions above will serve you better, and we would rather you pick the right tool. If you need a page to stay up to date, ours is the shortest path.
Don't want any extension?
You can make a page reload on a timer with a console snippet, a meta refresh tag or a bookmarklet. Each has limits, which our guide on refreshing a page without an extension explains. For choosing how often to reload, whichever tool you use, see how often a page should auto refresh.