Which browser is the fastest? When Google introduced Chrome, the emphasis was on the performance of the new browser.

Google regularly performed performance tests that demonstrated the superior performance of Google Chrome over other popular browsers such as Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Today, Chrome is the market leader. Microsoft is trying to make a difference with its new Microsoft Edge browser. Opera, after switching to the Chrome engine, had to actually recreate its browser from scratch, and Mozilla is constantly improving its Firefox project.

What about Google? It looks like the company is losing browser market share. This does not mean that the browser does not work in the best way for users, but only a consequence of the company's conservative position regarding the development of the project.

Speed ​​is not the only important factor for a browser. Of great importance is support for modern web standards, built-in useful functions for performing everyday tasks, security and privacy protection features, subjective performance and support for various extensions.

We will focus solely on the performance factor, but each user should choose their browser selection priorities.

Browsers

Benchmark tests were run on two different Windows 10 operating systems - one is the latest stable build and the other is the latest Windows Insider Preview build.

Computer 1 (Windows 10 stable)

  • Google Chrome Dev (version 53.0.2767)
  • Microsoft Edge Stable (version 25.10586)
  • Mozilla Firefox Nightly (version 50.0a1)
  • Opera Developer (version 40.0.2267.0)
  • Vivaldi (1.3.501.6)

Computer 2 (Windows 10 Insider Preview)

  • Google Chrome Stable (version 51.0.2704.103)
  • Mozilla Firefox (version 47.0)
  • Microsoft Edge (version 38.14371)
  • Opera (version 38)
  • Vivaldi (version 1.2)

Benchmarks

The test used the following benchmarks to test the performance of all tested browsers:

Each benchmark was run twice with no background activity.

results

The results are amazing. Chrome's performance on 1st computer was not very good in 2 out of 3 benchmarks, especially when compared to Opera and Vivaldi, which use an identical engine. It is possible that the problem is caused by a specific build of Chrome.

Microsoft Edge performed well in JetStream and Octane, but performed much worse in Speedometer. Somewhat surprising are the major differences between browsers that use an identical engine.

Chrome performed worse than Opera and Vivaldi in JetStream and Octane, but outperformed those browsers in Speedometer.

On the other hand, Vivaldi was better than Opera in Speedometer.

On the 2nd computer, a similar picture is observed. Microsoft Edge was the fastest in the two benchmarks, but ended up last in the Speedometer.

Chrome Stable performed roughly on par with Opera and Vivaldi in the first two benchmarks, but Opera's Speedometer score was significantly different from that of Chrome and Vivaldi.