Velja alternative

The free Velja alternative that targets Safari profiles

Velja is a great $8 router. If you want the same profile aware link routing for free, with Safari profiles as real destinations and a picker that blooms under your cursor, Burly is the alternative to try.

By Matt Senter, who builds Burly

Why people switch from Velja

People shopping for a Velja alternative almost always arrive for one of two reasons. The first is the $8: Velja is fairly priced, but link routing feels like something the OS should do, and paying for it grates. The second is Safari. Velja routes to Chromium and Firefox profiles but cannot target a Safari profile, so if your work life lives in a Safari profile, Velja simply cannot reach it. Burly is free and treats Safari profiles as first-class destinations, which is why most switchers land here.

Is Burly a good Velja alternative?

If you are shopping for a Velja alternative, the question is usually one of two things: you want the same profile-aware routing without the $8, or you need to reach Safari profiles that Velja cannot target. Burly answers both. It is free, it discovers your profiles automatically, and Safari profiles are first-class destinations. What you give up is Velja's rules engine and its ability to route links into native apps, so weigh how much of your routing you want to happen automatically versus at click time.

How to switch from Velja to Burly

1. Download Burly and drag it to Applications.
2. Open System Settings, then Desktop & Dock, and set Burly as your default web browser. This replaces Velja as the handler; you do not need to uninstall Velja first.
3. Burly reads your installed browsers and their profiles automatically. There are no rules to port over, because there are no rules.
4. Optionally give each profile an emoji, a color, and a keyboard key so the picker becomes muscle memory.

What you give up

Be honest with yourself about automation before you switch. Velja's rules can route a link silently, with no picker at all, and Burly has nothing equivalent: you choose at click time, every time. You will also lose Velja's native-app routing, so Zoom links stop opening in Zoom, and its tracking-parameter stripping. If most of your routing is already automatic and you like it that way, Velja is the better tool and this is not a switch worth making.

Want the full feature-by-feature breakdown, including where Velja wins? Read Burly vs. Velja.