Wait – it’s something none of us want to do. Especially not on the web: with slow page loading and long loading times, you quickly lose interest in the content. To avoid such tests of your patience, it’s not just a matter of having a good broadband connection – browsing speed also depends on which browser you use.
When interpreting HTML, executing scripts, or loading graphics and videos, browsers like Chrome, Edge, or Firefox often perform differently. We want to get to the bottom of these performance differences: Therefore, we let the most popular browsers compete for the top spot in a benchmark duel.
Test Environment
We ran our benchmarks on a mid-range computer with the following specifications:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 3.6 GHz
RAM: 16 GB, DDR4, 1,600 MHz
GPU: NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3600 Ti, 8 GB VRAM
Hard Drive: 970 EVO Plus, M.2 SSD
Operating System: Windows 10, version 22H2
Tested Browsers
Google Chrome: The most used browser in the world since 2012. Google makes most of the source code available to the public.
Mozilla Firefox: Firefox has been available since 2002 but has since lost its previous dominance, from a market share of over 70 percent to only about 3 percent today. The browser’s open-source code makes it very flexible, and you can configure it yourself with many extensions.
Opera: This proprietary browser is also available for free and now relies on the HTML renderer in the latest version of Chromium.
Microsoft Edge: Microsoft’s new browser was first launched in 2015 and is usually an integrated part of Windows.
Brave Browser: This open-source browser is available for many operating systems, from Windows to Android and macOS. The developers place particular importance on security and privacy.
Vivaldi: Originating from Norway and developed by one of the founders of Opera Software. The browser stands out with good ideas and flexibility.
Our benchmark tests demand everything from the browsers
Three demanding benchmarks for browsers are available for free on the browserbench.org website. Browsers are pushed to their performance limits in areas like page loading, response time, JavaScript or web assembly, and graphics performance. The focus of these evaluation procedures is on different areas in each case:
Speedometer 3.0: This test measures the response time of web applications. Demo scenarios are used to simulate user interactions.
Jetstream2: Here, the performance of web assembly and JavaScript is tested. To perform well in this test, browsers must start quickly and not waste time executing code.
Motionmark 1.3: In this graphical benchmark test, browsers must perform complex tasks and achieve a certain frame rate in complex animations (60 Hertz on our test system).
Which browser is the fastest?
The six browsers now have to prove themselves one by one in the selected benchmark tests. The requirements are always the same: we use the latest versions of the browsers, without any extensions.
Test 1: Speedometer 3.0
1st place: Chrome with 18.5 points
2nd place: Firefox with 17.2 points
3rd place: Brave with 17.0 points
4th place: Vivaldi with 16.8 points
5th place: Edge with 16.3 points
6th place: Opera with 13.9 points
Benchmark 2: Jetstream2
1st place: Opera with 223,719 points
2nd place: Chrome with 223,631 points
3rd place: Brave with 222,616 points
4th place: Vivaldi with 219,628 points
5th place: Edge with 217,623 points
6th place: Firefox with 154,365 points
Benchmark 3: Motionmark 1.3
1st place: Edge with 2054.54 points
2nd place: Chrome with 2033.72 points
3rd place: Opera with 1817.31 points
4th place: Vivaldi, with 1816.79 points
5th place: Brave with 1763.51 points
6th place: Firefox with 113.69 points
And the winner is…
… Chrome!
First place in one discipline and two second places: According to our browser race, Chrome is the clear winner – especially since Google’s browser was only a few points away from taking first place in all three tests.
Whether you are an everyday user or a real “power user,” Chrome is almost always the fastest option online. But the fast browser also has some downsides that go beyond speed: Google’s business model is based on data processing, and the company has repeatedly been criticized for collecting a disproportionately large amount of user data.
However, this cannot be said of the browser that came last in our browser comparison, where data protection is a top priority – but Firefox still comes in last place for both the Jetstream and Motionmark tests. In both cases, quite a bit behind the competition. Firefox can indeed be said to have achieved a good second place in processing web applications in the Speedometer test, but overall, Firefox lags behind the competitors.
To what extent this is noticeable in everyday use, however, also depends on individual usage behavior. Those looking for a suitable browser with more than just theoretical top speeds in mind will also find good arguments in favor of Firefox: among other things, lots of extensions and many configuration options. This means that Mozilla can impress with other things besides speed when you browse – but if you use Mozilla’s browser, you can only dream of the work speed of Google Chrome with Mozilla.
