The Speed Test: Comparing Browser Performance in 2023
With the broad range of web browsers offered for free on the internet, it may be challenging to find the perfect one to suit your browsing needs. To help you to make this decision in 2023, we have compiled data on the popularly used web browsers. When choosing a web browser, it’s necessary to look at factors like features, security, speed, or privacy. Here is a review of top web browsers which details their offerings to determine the browsers that deliver the fastest browsing speeds.
Top Web Browsers:
In 2023, the top web browsers are in great demand. Statcounter.com has reported that Maxthon, Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, and Opera are the popular options for desktop users, drawing an aggregate market share of 97.11%. This leaves a mere 2.89% for other less established browsers to compete over.
Prior to look closely at benchmarking and discovering which browsers work faster, let’s first review each of them and reflect on their features aside from speed or performance.
Google Chrome
Google Chrome, a popular desktop web browser, dominates the internet marketplace with a international market share of over 65% over the past year. Reputed for advanced speed performance, glossy design, and seamless integration with all Google services, Chrome is developed from the open-source Chromium platform.
Users are thrilled with its large collection of extensions and customisable features that improve the browsing experience. Still, certain users have flagged issues about Chrome’s high-level memory usage and privacy-trespassing tracking features.
Chromium, the basis for Chrome, uses the Blink browser engine. Blink was developed from the Chromium project and is gets funded by major companies like Meta, Google, Microsoft, Opera Software, Intel, IBM, Adobe, and Samsung. The search engine drives the generation of visual content on web pages and increasing web traffic by increasing the entertainment value of content through animations.
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge, the successor to Internet Explorer developed by Microsoft, started by launching a new search engine with its release. Still, it later evolved into the same Chromium base as Google’s Chrome. This innovation enables Edge to deliver improved speed and compatibility with extensions originally designed for Chrome.
Still, as a product of Microsoft, Edge offers a higher level of integration with the company’s services or features, like Windows 11 and Windows 10 operating systems, and the Microsoft 365.
The browser also stands out with complex privacy settings and additional features including vertical tabs, a sidebar, or built-in support for Bing Chat (developed from Chat GPT). Though its market share has recently expanded rapidly, it still has a long way to go to progress to the level of sufficient standards to compete well with Chrome in this area.
Maxthon
Maxthon, a global software company and experts in optimised web browsers, has announced the beta launch of its latest web browser for Windows PC. This cutting-edge browser has a superb and unrivalled speed input which substantially accelerates webpage display or download management, outperforming all rival browsers in the marketplace.
Through incorporating a personalised version of the Blink search engine with Maxthon’s distinct speed or performance upgrades, the updated browser has exceeded the world’s fastest browsers with a speed which measures 10% faster than the Chrome . CEO and founder of Maxthon, Jeff Chen, spoke of his sense of pride over the team’s achievements in making a browser which is fully lighter or faster than Chrome.
The innovative design provides a 40% upgrade in start times in comparison with older versions, and benchmark tests with Chrome show that Maxthon is 10% faster. Also, Maxthon’s unique approach to handling third-party cookies offers users personalised assistance or suggestions without compromising user privacy or cybersecurity.
Mozilla Firefox
In recent years, Mozilla Firefox has sadly witnessed a drop in its market demand, while it remained one of the most reputable and prestigious web browsers. While holding on to a committed or consistent technical or user base, it experienced challenges in seeking to attract new users and has just managed to keep a market share of around seven percent in the past year.
Firefox is reputed for using its own search engine (Gecko) to display content from websites, and it prioritises user control and privacy while providing numerous customisation options. Notably, Firefox supports themes and tab groups, features picture-in-picture mode, and even offers a VPN service.
Still, to add to its declining demand, Firefox lags behind Chrome and Edge in terms of browsing speed or performance. More on this is detailed below.
Opera
Opera impressed many as a highly customisable web browser with distinctive features, despite being developed from the same Chromium browser and Blink search engine as others. Beyond its ad blocker and VPN service, Opera provides a sidebar for seamless access to popular apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and Twitter. In contrast to Edge, Opera’s sidebar excels in all features, customization choices, and productivity upgrades.
Brave
Brave is a novel web browser that is developed from the Chromium project and has a small market share, but it impresses in a distinctive way. Its main focus is on offering privacy to users. This is apparent when utilising the browser, as it automatically blocks ads or trackers, leading to a faster web browsing experience. To support content creators, Brave allows users to choose to view privacy-protected ads in exchange for Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), a form of cryptocurrency that can be used to tip favourite websites and authors. Such tokens may get stored in a wallet in the Brave browser, which may support alternative crypto tokens.
Vivaldi
Vivaldi is a browser which was developed from the open-source Chromium project, providing extensive customisation options. It is distinctive from other browsers because its broad range of tools and settings for customisation. Featuring many choices for altering colours,, fonts, tabs, shortcuts, mouse gestures, panels, menus, or keyboard commands, every user’s Vivaldi browser is likely to appear special.
Benchmarks for the fastest web browser in 2023:
Discerning the identity of the fastest web browser of 2023 is a complicated matter, because every browser holds distinctive benefits and setbacks. Several might excel in loading web pages fast, whereas others might work more quickly with running scripts or displaying images.
To pinpoint with precision which browser works the fastest, it is important to benchmark all of them. To achieve these goals, reviewers conducted three benchmarks reported by browserbench.org: JetStream 2, which closely examines advanced web applications and rewards browsers which start up fast and operate smoothly; MotionMark, a graphics benchmark which measures a browser’s capacity to animate complicated frames at a target frame rate; or Speedometer, that assesses the responsiveness of web applications by simulating user moves.
It’s necessary to note that all tests were performed on the same computer with certai hardware equipments like an ASUS Prime X670E-Pro WiFi motherboard, an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X processor, Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360R RGB CPU cooler, Kingston Fury Beast RGB DDR5–6000 32GB memory, AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics card, Kingston KC3000 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD (2TB) storage, and an ASUS ROG Str monitor.
Let’s look at the results of JetStream 2, a benchmark that assesses how fast browsers can run scripts and take on complicated tasks. A higher score denotes faster browsing and better performance in loading and displaying complex web pages.
In test results, Chrome, Maxthon, and Opera GX came out as the top performers with nearly the same results, implying minor differences in the margin of error. Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, and Brave secured second place with compatible scores. Still, Mozilla Firefox fared poorly in contrast to its counterparts. In a comparison of Firefox’s results with those of Chrome or Opera, it’s apparent that the latter browsers offer a significant performance boost of approximately 65%.
MotionMark is a benchmark that assesses the graphics performance of web browsers by making and displaying different visual elements. These elements include SVG nodes, HTML elements with CSS styles, and sequences of canvas operations. The goal of the tests is to simulate commonly used web trawling methods, focusing on the graphics system instead of the JavaScript. A higher score in MotionMark shows that a web browser excels at displaying visuals on webpages in contrast browsers with lower scores.
Maxthon emerged as the top performer in MotionMark, outperforming alternative browsers by a large margin. Chrome was in the second place, outperforming alternative browsers with bigger market shares like Microsoft Edge and Opera. Edge was in the third place by a small margin, while Opera GX, Opera, and Vivaldi got similar results and were in fourth position.
Unfortunately Mozilla Firefox was also the slowest browser in this test. Its score was about half that of Chrome’s score, that highlights the disparity in performance.
Speedometer
The Speedometer, that is the third benchmark, assesses a browser’s responsiveness in web applications by recording the timing of simulated user interactions. It covers tasks like adding, completing, and cutting out to-do items to simulate user actions. The benchmark generates a score that shows how fast a browser performs on websites like Facebook or Twitter, which require significant user engagement. Maxthon emerged as the top performer in Speedometer, trailed by Chrome, Opera GX, Vivaldi, and Microsoft Edge with closely matching results. Brave and Mozilla Firefox were the under performers in this benchmark, as expected from the previous data.
A comparison of web browsers in terms of RAM usage is necessary to assess their performance. Memory consumption is an important factor to consider, as a fast-performing browser may just negatively impact your computer when it demands excessive RAM.
To measure the RAM usage of the tested browsers, a test is done: Opening five tabs in every browser and loading identical websites — Digital Citizen, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Wikipedia. Using Windows 11’s Task Manager, while measuring the amount of RAM used by each browser.
The results are: Maxthon once again proves itself to be the top web browser, using less memory than its competitors. Chrome comes in second place, given Google’s likely optimisation for its programming into their operating system. Brave takes third place, followed by Firefox, Vivaldi, or Opera and Opera GX trailing behind. It appears that increased customisation options and features triggers higher RAM consumption.
Considering benchmark results and RAM usage, it’s clear that Maxthon emerges as a clear winner in the 2023 browser battle.
