Greasemonkey is the original. Created in 2005, it birthed the entire userscript ecosystem. But while Tampermonkey added bells and whistles, Greasemonkey stayed minimalist— too minimalist for some.
I switched to for daily driving. It feels like Tampermonkey from 2018—before the feature bloat, before the telemetry fears. But I keep ScriptCat in a portable Firefox install for those late-night automation experiments. tampermonkey alternative
And Tampermonkey? It's still installed. Still updated. Still capable. But now it's no longer the default. It's just one option among many—exactly how userscripts were meant to be. The web is your canvas. Don't let a single extension hold the only brush. Greasemonkey is the original
The 4.0 rewrite broke thousands of scripts by removing GM_* APIs. The community panicked. Many left. But if you only need simple DOM manipulation and hate feature creep, Greasemonkey is still a masterpiece of focus. I switched to for daily driving
AdGuard’s browser extension isn't just for blocking ads. It has a hidden userscript engine that supports most Tampermonkey APIs. The killer feature? It runs before the page loads. Tampermonkey waits for DOM readiness; AdGuard injects at the network level.
So I went looking for alternatives. Not because Tampermonkey is bad—it's brilliant. But because no brilliant tool should become the only tool you trust.