Knowledge work happens in a browser. Research, decisions, communication, building — most of a working day passes through the tab strip. The tools that frame that work should respect the person doing it.
Their data stays theirs. Their AI assists when asked, and only when asked. Their projects follow them across every device they own. Maho is the browser built on that belief.
Three commitments
1. Your data stays on your device.
Maho runs locally. Browsing history, tabs, notes, mail, and Spaces live in encrypted storage on your machine. When sync is on, devices talk to each other through an end-to-end encrypted relay — not through a cloud database we control. Our sync architecture is published in the engineering blog so you can verify what crosses the wire and what doesn’t.
2. AI assists when asked. It doesn’t act on its own.
Other AI browsers chase autonomous agents — software that picks tasks, navigates websites, and clicks on your behalf. We think that paradigm is the wrong tool for most real work. The failure modes are not benchmark-shaped. They’re “agent purchased the wrong flight” shaped.
Maho takes a different stance. Think of it like driving: full self-driving lets the car go anywhere; hand-on-wheel keeps you in control with the AI accelerating what you do. Maho is hand-on-wheel. Summarize this page. Clean up these tab titles. Draft a reply, but let me send it. The AI is powerful — it just doesn’t act in your accounts when you’re not watching.
3. Your work follows you across every device.
Spaces, tabs, notes, and mail are designed to sync to every device you own. macOS today; iPhone and Android in development. Cross-device isn’t a premium feature gated behind a subscription — it’s the core of how Maho works.
What that means in practice
Maho is free to use. Bring your own API key (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama) and you pay your provider directly — no metered credits, no markup. If you’d rather not manage keys, Maho Pro is $5/mo and Max is $20/mo for managed AI with clear model ceilings.
Maho is proprietary software. We are not open source. We compensate for that by publishing the architecture, by being verifiable through network behavior on your own device, and by being reachable directly. If something matters to you, ask. We answer.