Six Revisions

Matthew Heidenreich

October 14th, 2009

I still have to stick to good ol’ firefox when it all comes down to it.

Mike Smith

October 14th, 2009

Looks like Chrome hits the nail on the head in just about every category. Firefox seems to run almost as slow as IE. nice chart. Thanks for posting it. I’ve downloaded it.

Kel

October 14th, 2009

While I see that testing machine stats in the full-size graphic, I think it’s important to note in the story which machine and OS this is based on.

Eric B.

October 14th, 2009

Interesting to know. I’m pretty sure that performance would be affected by any addons installed, though.

Steve

October 14th, 2009

Chrome’s only fast cuz it is a barebones browser with barely any features.

Adam Fitzgerald

October 14th, 2009

According to the charts, Safari beat Firefox 4 out 6. Why is it that they are listed equal 2nd? Are some of the charts weighted more heavily?

André Leite

October 14th, 2009

I would like to see the same test on OS X

Mark Aplet

October 14th, 2009

Interesting test results. I would be curious to know what the results would look like for a Macintosh comparing FF, Safari, Opera, and Chrome (beta)

Steve J.

October 14th, 2009

I assume these tests were done on a Windows computer. I wonder how Safari on a Mac compares to the others (minus Explorer, of course). Any chance you could do the same tests on a Mac?

My gut-feeling is that Safari on a Mac is much faster than Firefox for most things.

Dane Ash

October 14th, 2009

One thing that effects speed in firefox are add-ons. They use up a lot of memory. I guess all browsers were downloaded and tested as the bare software. Javascript css heavy sites do pretty badly on internet explorer hey.

Angela

October 14th, 2009

Firefox for me and its never slow lol

Kyle

October 14th, 2009

And Chrome is victorious, that’s great to see that Google can help push innovation in Browser Applications after just a few iterations. Did you have a Mac or PC? I’m curious if the Mac development version of Chrome numbers differ from the Windows version?

Peter

October 14th, 2009

Yes a mac comparison would be a wonderful idea since I have used both safari on windows and on mac and it is considerably better on a mac.

Danc

October 14th, 2009

Disappointed lousy IE….I wonder why people still using it. It department in the Big company, please force your staff to shift. lol

Nurdiansyah

October 14th, 2009

Yes, I used Google Chrome everyday, and Firefox with various plugin for web development. Thanks…

Josh

October 14th, 2009

This is all well and good for Joe User, but when it comes to web development, Firefox is still the Gold Standard, even if it occasionally decides to eat up a gig of my RAM. I haven’t seen nearly the breadth or depth of useful add-ons for any other browser yet. (And I apologize to the apologists, but Chrome’s Inspector doesn’t even touch Firebug.)

JT

October 15th, 2009

I did a SunSpider test on Mac with Chrome (pre-release) and Safari 4 last week and Chrome’s JS engine is about 1.5x faster than Safari. I did not do all of the other benchmarks however.

Doug S.

October 15th, 2009

Not sure why Safari and Firefox are tied. If you look at the scores Safari is usually pretty far ahead of Firefox and only loses twice by a very close margin.

To me what this test really says is WebKit is king and if you use it in your browser it’s going to be rocket fast.

Rahul

October 15th, 2009

I love Chrome as a web user. So its great to see it on top. Great job Google. But as a web developer,I think firefox is the best.

Jorg

October 15th, 2009

Thank you, it’s a nice chart

The Javascript speed difference is definitely noticable

ferris

October 15th, 2009

Synthetic benchmarks mean nothing in terms of browsing speed. Try loading up a couple of sites from identical machines via scripts and time them. So tired of this crap being put out there, if you actually try the browser you’ll notice Opera feels faster startup, shutdown, etc… than all the rest. If you want to benchmark it go ahead.. I prefer to actually use my browser.

webdesign

October 15th, 2009

thank you for that comparison. What would be the conclusion for the “normal” user concerning performance?

simonjs

October 15th, 2009

It would be interesting to see how the results differ on different OS’s.

Obviously it wouldn’t be possible to test IE on OSX, linux or Safari on linux for example, but Opera, Chrome and Firefox could all be tested.

NM

October 15th, 2009

I like how there’s like 4 stats, with Chrome winning all of them – but when you look at page load time the thing that really matters you see that FFox is #1 haha

Tom

October 15th, 2009

Interesting to see Chrome 3 is faster than Safari again. They seem to be racing against each other and constantly going faster.
It’s only a good thing!

Elliott

October 15th, 2009

Don’t see any major surprises here.. Nice tests, thanks for sharing them and confirming that IE is a **** browser.

JK

October 15th, 2009

I think that nobody notices any differences in real word browsing when using ff, opera, chrome or safari.

Jarek

October 15th, 2009

Interesting results, especially for real life page load times. I only see small problem: for 3 samples the confidence intervals (95%) are overlapping, so from statistical point of view all browsers are the same and those tests should not be used in “overall performance”.

Can you increase the sample size for “Page load time” and “Browser cache performance”?

JDM

October 15th, 2009

It really should be noted that Safari, in this case, is Safari for Windows. The performance difference between Windows and OS X is quite big, presumably because on Windows it requires considerable extra guff in the way of additional code to abstract away the Windows APIs.

George

October 15th, 2009

The last two tests are worthless, since they are too dependent on network latency. A better test would be to check this on a local network web site.

Testing each browser three times and averaging the values is also well below what you need to make some real results. It depends on how much the averages are affected for each x times you do the test.

Optimally the tests should be run on each browser until the averages for each test normalize. The results presented here are therefore only indicative and not conclusive at all.

ArleyM

October 15th, 2009

No IE6?! Haha

turo62

October 15th, 2009

Opera 10.10 is now definitely the 2′nd fastest browser. There is no way Firefox loads pages faster than opera 10.10.

Daniel15

October 15th, 2009

I’m suprised Opera is so slow in this benchmark O_o
I still love it. :D

Linux And Friends

October 15th, 2009

It is nice to know that in majority of the tests Google Chrome is doing quite well.

Me

October 15th, 2009

this review is a sh#t. Chrome eats up your processor like a hungry lion.

M name

October 15th, 2009

this review is a sh#t. Chrome eats up your processor like a hungry lion.

libeco

October 15th, 2009

These charts are fun at most. Somehow the results are never the same as my own conclusion during everyday usage. I’m using Maxthon 2 (built on IE7) for normal browsing. It’s completely customizable and quite fast, making it my favorite browser. I use Firefox for web development and have installed a few add-ons for this purpose. Firefox is extremely slow for me (loading takes over 10 seconds). Chrome and Opera are nice and fast browsers, but they don’t have the good user experience Maxthon has, or the extensive set of plug-ins for web development that firefox has.

So, nice to see charts, but it all comes down to how a browser behaves in a specific area where it’s needed.

Bosto

October 15th, 2009

Yap I love Google, I’m using chrome and firefox this browsers are the best today i think so.

Leandro

October 15th, 2009

Fake, he works to google.

Ryan

October 15th, 2009

Great post. Firefox should be in 3rd place though. Safari clobbers Firefox on many benchmarks which clearly proves the power of Webkit.

2nd: Safari
3rd: Firefox

batmanforever

October 15th, 2009

The latest versions of the five major most web browsers? No, you are not using the latest version of IE8.
I’m using a later version of IE8 (8.0.7600.16385). Try to make the test again with the latest version of IE8.
Do the test on MAC and Linux – you would get a different resultat (as JDM states).

Ahmadism

October 15th, 2009

Chrome is semi-barebones for my taste. Simply put, there are add-ons and extensions for Firefox that I cannot live without. I wonder if Chrome is available in a portable version … hmmmm.

Carolus Holman

October 15th, 2009

Funny, You got IE 8 to Load? I have to start the Browser 2x 3x to get it to load a single page…

Joe

October 15th, 2009

You should add OSX Safari to the test.

I wish I could take IE out in the and shoot it.

Riyadh

October 15th, 2009

firefox i think uses up more CPU than IE8 in my opinion.i have all the major browsers installed on my PC xcept tht i choose to run chrome 4 instead of 3.even then firefox is the slowest to start.IE8 starts way faster than firefox.my PC is Vista (32-bit), Pentium D @2.66 GHz and 3GB DDR2 RAM

king

October 15th, 2009

Not at all surprised by these results. On my work PC, I generally use Chrome for general web-browsing, though I’ll switch to Firefox to debug javascript (firebug, chrome’s inspector just doesn’t quite cut it) or fiddle with CSS.

mikeeeee

October 15th, 2009

only bad thing about chrome is no google toolbar.

i’m waiting for the convergence…..

chromium o/s.

chrome browser.

google voice.

google mail.

google wave.

then hang on for the changing of the guard.

old computer dynasties either change with the times or disappear, remember wang or digital equipment?

Matt

October 15th, 2009

Chrome looks like a winner, but you left out the category of timing how quickly the browser can make itself completely vanish from your system without a trace. Chrome wins that one, too, and is the main reason I don’t use it.

drewbeta

October 15th, 2009

Nice chart. one of my classmates just did a presentation on chrome, and the data he used wasn’t nearly as good as this. However, I’m a web developer, so I’m sticking to firefox because it helps me get things done quicker. maybe if google releases a mac version of chrome, and opened it up to third-party plugins (it’s really hard to beat ff with fb as a web developer), I might consider switching. thanks for the info!

José Mota

October 15th, 2009

i would love to see Mac OS X benchmarking as well :)

thatoneguy

October 15th, 2009

This article is very pretty and all but in the end its utter garbage.

You would need to test dozens of pages dozens of times to get anything even remotely concrete and even then its very questionable. But why bother actually going for accurate results when you can be lazy and warn people to use caution when interpreting the results…

Just another clueless tool making a quick and inaccurate comparison to get some page hits.

Bjorn

October 15th, 2009

What?! I think something went wrong with the Opera testing.

designfollow

October 15th, 2009

thanks for this info.

Mike J

October 15th, 2009

“This is all well and good for Joe User, but when it comes to web development, Firefox is still the Gold Standard”

For many that’s true, though I personally have come to champion Opera for development. In my experiences it’s more accurate on standards ( as is Safari ) than either Chrome or Firefox, and it has developer tools just like Firebug that many have lauded as at least on par with Firebug.

I’ve encountered several items that have come up as CSS issues with Firefox and several Javascript issues with Chrome, which has unfortunately started to push both of them into the category of “update for” rather than “develop for” when it comes to web development – leaving my primary development to be done against Opera and Safari, then I do updates for Firefox / Chrome, and finally IE.

Pheagey

October 15th, 2009

Chrome = good but not 100%. and the way Google does the product life cycle probably willnot be out of beta for the next 5 years. FF has a stable base and has been the ‘under dog’ VS IE for sometime now. chromes got alot of ground to cover before it would be considered a contender.

As long the user is not user IE6 Im happy…

Emilio

October 15th, 2009

You didn’t measure RAM usage, and that’s the most important thing for people with old PCs in the end…

bcarter

October 15th, 2009

Anyone have word on when Chrome will be released for Mac?

Sami Susiaho

October 15th, 2009

This data is solid, but cannot be used as a test of which browser is the best. The benchmark speed of a browser has little to do with the usability. I am thinking of ease of use, available plugins, features embedded by default, security, stability and overall looks. The image of the company providing the browser is a major factor as well. Then there are the updates. While one might think that it is important to have frequent updates that are quickly in place to plug the security holes, the user might prefer less frequent updates and accept the increased security risk. That is, if the user cares at all.

Zvir

October 15th, 2009

Why there is no info reg what plugins and addons are installed in every browser?
This influence performance a lot! Don’t U think so?

Lee

October 15th, 2009

This information makes me realise why some people still hold on to IE, I’m seeing that Firefox is losing out to Chrome in most respects, yet I’m still unwilling to leave it because I like it.

I think in a couple of years time Chrome will be at a point where it’ll be my default browser.

Michael

October 15th, 2009

Now, how about you run the same tests on Vista x64?

Andrei Patrascu

October 15th, 2009

Great article as always Jacob! Anyway chrome may be faster but I still like Firefox. Also Opera is a good alternative :).

Burak Erdem

October 15th, 2009

It’s so obvious that Google Chrome is the new king of web, and to tell the truth it really deserves this. For years I used Firefox just for its extensions. And now I’m very happy with my Chrome. I only use Firefox when I write HTML because of Firebug. Other than that I never start my Firefox.

Thank you Google for making such a great browser, and Microsoft for making our lives so hard…

Opera-user

October 15th, 2009

Opera runs alot faster on some sites with javascript off (onemanga!). Though this doesn’t let me browse sites that need javascript at the same time =/.

I still use opera because of some small opera features.

2LD

October 15th, 2009

just curious, who is the internet provider?

Jarryd

October 15th, 2009

If only Google made Chrome for Mac already :(

Eric Lau

October 15th, 2009

I love Google Chrome but it keep gave me blue screen from time to time….any one can help? I am on XP Pro

Paula

October 16th, 2009

I use Internet Explorer mostly only because I find that most websites look better in it. It is slow however but I am finding Firefox is getting just as bad. And I don’t use Google Chrome as it limits my search to Australia and for my online business I need to be able to search the US.

Ibad

October 16th, 2009

firefox. Safari always drop the connection. (i’m on OSX)
Chrome is in development for OS X.

rory

October 16th, 2009

Very interesting, didn’t realise chrome was such a bad ass when it comes to general performance… Personally though I find safari and firefox the best as I’m a mac boy. My websites always look better in these browsers. But surely there are many factors, like computer speed, broadband speed etc?

Gallivanter

October 16th, 2009

Chrome rules. :-)

scottgm

October 16th, 2009

results will vary depending on what your using.

carry out the same tests on a 3.06Ghz iMac with 4GB Ram and a really good broadband connection?

Dzinepress

October 16th, 2009

i really like mozila and safari, IE have many problems they don’t solve yet, as a designer i always prefer both my favorite browsers, also accept comparison.

tom

October 16th, 2009

“Resolving Host” still a big problem for Chrome. I don’t see how it can win any speed test as long as the problem exist!

Valdeir Gomes

October 16th, 2009

Hi I live in Brazil and here we use mozila firefox for enter BANK LINE cause his safety.
SO you can say any thinnk about security, which web BROWSER is more security.

PS. Nice article

Sivasayanth

October 16th, 2009

Yeah pretty good result and article . but sometime i got bad experience from all over the browser. that is all consumed 100% cpu as well memory too. then it will automatically stuck.

Ali Qayyum

October 16th, 2009

thanks for the information, i like firefox due to it’s customization features. i love it’s add-on. i got few tips from this link http://bit.ly/1nI8B1

Ben l Awesome Wallpapers

October 16th, 2009

Figures that IE would be at the bottom of the list:)

Oliver Mezquita

October 16th, 2009

Very interesting article. One more article to have handy when trying to explain why users should use IE as less as possible. I mentioned it in my blog.

sJ.

October 17th, 2009

even though, i cant live without firefox addons.

orlando

October 17th, 2009

Thanks for the info. Only one question: what is Internet Explorer?

anya

October 18th, 2009

wow.. thats amazing Congrat for Google

Sam Logan

October 18th, 2009

Interesting post, I wasn’t expecting Chrome to win by so much!

shutdown

October 19th, 2009

yeah we can say google top everything but i have google chrome, i get crashes so far… i dont like it

a point millisecond difference of speed is not an issue to me thats why im sticking the Firefox; btw i manage to tweak my firefox memory issue using: about:config. plus ff is more reliable and also you have a wide choices of add-ons

ZusE84

October 19th, 2009

Hate IE with a passion!

Mark

October 19th, 2009

Based on my experience, Chrome is the fastest browser. However, Firefox’s features surpasses Safari and Chrome put together. To be fair, an average user won’t be able to tell significant difference between the 3 browser.

And now… IE. I’m sorry to say this but IE really really REALLY sucks BIG TIME. I hated it then, I still hate it now.

Anyway… I use all 3 browsers. I really appreciate Safari’s “Top Sites”. It gives a more sophisticated feel. Firefox’s add-ons are unparalleled. I find managing bookmarks in firefox the easiest. Speed and simplicity are Chrome’s selling point.

Thanks for your review… =)

Jehan

October 19th, 2009

Hey,

Nice but you did not mention anything about memory consumption. So I did it:
http://recyclableelectrons.blogspot.com/2009/10/performance-comparison-of-major-web.html

Eric

October 19th, 2009

Personally I use Opera and I find it quite fast though not as fast as Chrome at some tasks. That said, I find a couple of problems with this test. Please let me know if I am mistaken.

- CPU usage is measured when running Sunspider JavaScript test. That seems to be only one way to measure CPU usage and the task manager also seems a less scientific way of determining CPU load
- Page loads test is only tested on yahoo.com frontpage. This is far too limited a selection.
- Page cache performance is also only done for 1 page when browsers like Opera have very evolved page caching mechanisms.

nickvester

October 19th, 2009

wow, never try any other browser except fire fox and IE, and its more confortable using firefox than IE. but this post made me curious to try the 2 others (Google Chrome, Opera 10.0)

Lee Munroe

October 20th, 2009

Nice work Jacob. Had no idea Chrome was so good

Bob

October 20th, 2009

Wow- guess I’ll have to try Chrome again. Still like my Firefox though, and no surprise with IE – oink oink!

Tekshek

October 21st, 2009

in my opinion firefox is the best browser

Lindsay

October 21st, 2009

It would be interesting to see how standards complient all these browsers are in conjunction with a test like this.

Mike J made the statement of using Opera for development, I have to agree with him I do the same.

Obviously standards will not affect performace and memory etc. but it would give you a nice “overall view” of capabilities.

PS – Nice job.

jsh02_nova

October 21st, 2009

Performance is only one functional criteria. Chrome dosen’t have a 508 compliant interface and doesn’t have an proper rendering engine to handle all the varaitions in html markup.

Craig

October 22nd, 2009

Firefox it is for me and has been for the last few years.

Had a brief look at chrome before and may have another look based on that performance.

Singpore

October 23rd, 2009

One thing to bear in mind for this test. Chrome is not the typical browser compared to the rest. I mean as part of Google’s plan, eventually Chrome will be the window (no puns intended) to their cloud infrastructure where applications will be hosted. So its not the normal firefox/IE browser.

James

October 26th, 2009

You neglect one area: memory usage. Chrome is a huge memory hog on Vista, which is ultimately why I switched back (ironically) to Firefox.

Yazi

October 28th, 2009

I use Mac Firefox almost exclusively. I’ve had some stability
issues, and it uses too many resources, but with Adblock Plus and Flashblock, it has the best mix of performance and features.

Indrek

November 1st, 2009

Very interesting graph. Although I knew already that IE would probably be the worst I was actually pretty surprised that Chrome overpowered Firefox. Until now I was pretty sceptical about Chrome.

Mathieu

November 4th, 2009

I tired of seeing these kind of benchmark when FF and Safaria have huge memory leaks… How many time did I have to close and open them to free almost 1GB of memory… When using 1GB, the whole OS become slow and FF and Safari freeze for a while then come back… Please I don’t care about 1ms of CSS rendering… but I care about the long minutes FF or Safari freeze then comes back and the long minutes I spend restarting my browsers…

Daniel

November 10th, 2009

Dear Jacob I must disagree with you because I consider this test a little irelevant and here’s why :

Google Chrome may perform better than other browsers on a single OS.

What about testing the same browsers on different computers with different amount of RAM, CPU etc. and also on different OS such as :

Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows Vista
Microsoft Windows Server 2008
Microsoft Windows 7
Linux ( all major distros )
Mac OS X ( different versions )

As far as I know Google Chrome is being optimized for the web experience but doesn’t have all the features of other browsers.

It’s my personal opinion and I could be wrong but I don’t think so.

Kim H

November 10th, 2009

Only issues I have:

1) Chrome does not come for mac.

2) Firefox crashes far too easily.

I’ve generally been using mostly Safari; I just don’t like that it doesn’t tend to save my tabs like other browsers do. At other times I use Opera, but I greatly dislike its apparent slowness in rendering JS.

Other thing is, I like Firefox’s plugins, so I tend to use it most for developmental work than I do other browsers; it’s really nice being able to edit code and troubleshoot in the same browser.

Nice work.

Em

November 14th, 2009

I thought so. Chrome is amazing.

mark

November 16th, 2009

I’d like to see benchmarks run for XP and 7…
Friends don’t let friends use Internet Exploder…

Dane

November 20th, 2009

How true. the only i us Firefox for long session on the web and Chrome for short. Firefox’s plethora of add-ons just make a long session easier and put every thin i am interested in in a few clicks (and thus the least amount of time) possible.

But if i just nee a Movie look up off IMdB or a recipe i hit up Chrome.

If i want to have suicidal thoughts i will go with IE… nit i do no want suicidal thoughts.

Jared

November 22nd, 2009

You should throw Epiphany in the mix and see if chrome still comes out on top.

Jonathan Harley

November 24th, 2009

Crazy, IE 8 doesn’t feel that slow – but I use Chrome when I can anyway..

Maybe it’s not surprising because most of the differences (as opposed to the biggest differences) are in 10s of milliseconds; barely enough time to blink..

Dante

November 27th, 2009

Few surprises here. But why does a developer of Microsoft’s calibre, with their experience, market share and, presumably, the pick of the graduate programmers consistently produce such a lousy web browser? Seriously, I cannot get my head around this at all.

dude

December 4th, 2009

IE6 FTW !

Stig

December 4th, 2009

If in the results there is a joint second shouldn’t the next place be forth not third?

Lauri

December 7th, 2009

This just confirms that IE is actually internet exploDer!
I think i´m still going to use Firefox because of the amount of addons you can have.

Lyons s

December 12th, 2009

I sometimes find firefox a bit annoying, however IE is worse

Malamen

December 16th, 2009

Fake.

ejes

December 30th, 2009

How about running the same tests on OS X and Linux?

Drakeor

January 10th, 2010

I’d have to disagree on some of the results. I run an older single core computer and actually Firefox has a much worse page load time then chrome and opera.

To improve the results of this, I’d run the tests on more then just one computer on more then one platform.

I currently use opera, since firefox ran very slow on my older computer.

Oisín

January 12th, 2010

In terms of CPU usage on OS X, it looks like Safari < Firefox < Opera < Chrome.

The current release of Chrome uses quite a lot of CPU time on the Mac implementation, but it's early days. I stopped using it after the first try, having opened up all the same tabs I had open in Opera (about 30), when the collective CPU usage of all the Chrome processes hit around 30-40%.
And Opera uses quite a lot of CPU already.

Also missing from this comparison is physical memory use – Opera on my 2 gig Macbook is currently taking up 374 MB, and often goes somewhat higher, but I have a lot of tabs open. Firefox and Safari OTOH tend to use significantly less RAM. Important if, say, you have a laptop which, although produced in 2007, will only hold a maximum 2 gigs of RAM (thanks Apple, clowns), and you're programming in Eclipse or some other memory hog IDE!

PVincent

January 13th, 2010

I like Google Chrome for every day browsing but there are still some websites that don’t work with it. I often find myself loading up Internet Explorer just so I can do a transaction.

Joseph Jaber

January 13th, 2010

Why bother to test such a thing? Chrome and Safari have the superior rendering engines. Chrome is typically behind a little on their Webkit builds. Gecko doesn’t hold as much sophistication and support for modern CSS or HTML5, Gecko still has display quarks. Trident is non-standards compliant. Whether or not the browsers could pass the Acid test or any real performance factors haven’t been displayed.

Safari is out of element on the OS side, and Safari also has specular loading, so it’s not going to pull data onto a page until it gets dependant effects and/or jquery scripts or spriting. (and this defense is coming from a Chrome user)

This isn’t necessarily unhelpful, but it is certainly a straw man argument, that should, in no way, shape, or form, be considered by a web developer.

Bhushan

January 19th, 2010

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/videos.aspx?mname=IE8_Perf_Test2

I see how easy it is to get carried away.

Williams

February 1st, 2010

Good Results Mate, Still i fix to firefox. Thanks for the Update.

jun3th

February 8th, 2010

I used firefox with my browser for secure browsing

Taghi

February 12th, 2010

I do not agree with the superiority of Chrome’s performance. I could not use it due to problems with it and rolled back to Mozilla Firefox.

Dev Basu

February 19th, 2010

While I love Chrome’s speed overall it still does not beat Firefox in terms of sheer versatility. When that day comes around, I’ll be more than happy to switch.

J.F.

February 23rd, 2010

Dude, it was tested on a Dell. I wouldn’t trust this if I were you. Dells can’t do crap.

Oiseaux

March 4th, 2010

Tried Chrome but something missing, not sure what.

By the way, who or what is Internet Explorer, are they new, are they any good !!