This article compares browser engines, especially actively-developed ones. [lower-alpha 1]
Some of these engines have shared origins. For example, the WebKit engine was created by forking the KHTML engine in 2001. [1] Then, in 2013, a modified version of WebKit was officially forked as the Blink engine. [2]
These tables summarize what actively-developed [lower-alpha 1] engines support. [lower-alpha 8]
The operating systems that engines can run on without emulation.
Engine | Windows | macOS | iOS [3] | Android | Linux | BSD | Haiku |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
WebKit | Yes [lower-roman 1] | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Blink | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes [lower-roman 2] |
Gecko | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Goanna | Yes | Yes [27] | No | No [28] | Yes | Yes | No |
Notes
Engine | JPEG | GIF | PNG | SVG | WebP | AVIF |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
WebKit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Blink [lower-alpha 8] | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Gecko | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Goanna | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Engine | VP9 | AV1 | HEVC | H264+AAC | Opus | FLAC |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
WebKit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Depends | Yes |
Blink | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Gecko | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Goanna | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Engine | TTF | OTF | WOFF | WOFF2 | @font-face | Ligatures |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
WebKit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Blink | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Gecko | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Goanna | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Engine | Web Components | WebGL | WebGPU [31] | XHTML |
---|---|---|---|---|
WebKit | Yes | Yes | Not yet | Yes |
Blink | Yes | Yes | Yes [32] | Yes |
Gecko | Yes | Yes | Not yet | Yes |
Goanna | Yes [33] | Yes | No | Yes |
A browser engine is a core software component of every major web browser. The primary job of a browser engine is to transform HTML documents and other resources of a web page into an interactive visual representation on a user's device.
KHTML is a discontinued browser engine that was developed by the KDE project. It originated as the engine of the Konqueror browser in the late 1990s, but active development ceased in 2016. It was officially discontinued in 2023.
A browser war is a competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war" (1995–2001) consisted of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, and the "second browser war" (2004-2017) between Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome.
Presto was the browser engine of the Opera web browser from the release of Opera 7 on 28 January 2003, until the release of Opera 15 on 2 July 2013, at which time Opera switched to using the Blink engine that was originally created for Chromium. Presto was also used to power the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers.
WebKit is a browser engine primarily used in Apple's Safari web browser, as well as all web browsers on iOS and iPadOS. WebKit is also used by the PlayStation consoles starting with the PS3, the Tizen mobile operating systems, the Amazon Kindle e-book reader, Nintendo consoles starting with the 3DS Internet Browser, and the discontinued BlackBerry Browser.
This is a comparison of both historical and current web browsers based on developer, engine, platform(s), releases, license, and cost.
NetSurf is an open-source web browser which uses its own layout engine. Its design goal is to be lightweight and portable. NetSurf provides features including tabbed browsing, bookmarks, and page thumbnailing.
A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web pages.
Opera is a multi-platform web browser developed by its namesake company Opera. The current edition of the browser is based on Chromium. Opera is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. Two mobile versions are still active, called Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. Opera also has a news aggregator app called Opera News with an AI search-engine.
V8 is a JavaScript and WebAssembly engine developed by Google for its Chrome browser. V8 is free and open-source software that is part of the Chromium project and also used separately in non-browser contexts, notably the Node.js runtime system.
Chromium is a free and open-source web browser project, primarily developed and maintained by Google. It is a widely-used codebase, providing the vast majority of code for Google Chrome and many other browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet, Vivaldi and Opera. The code is also used by several app frameworks.
WebGL is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelerated usage of physics, image processing, and effects in the HTML canvas. WebGL elements can be mixed with other HTML elements and composited with other parts of the page or page background.
A lightweight web browser is a web browser that sacrifices some of the features of a mainstream web browser in order to reduce the consumption of system resources, and especially to minimize the memory footprint.
The Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) is an open-source software framework for embedding a Chromium web browser within another application. This enables developers to add web browsing functionality to their application, as well as the ability to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create the application's user interface.
Media Source Extensions (MSE) is a W3C specification that allows JavaScript to send byte streams to media codecs within web browsers that support HTML video and audio. Among other possible uses, this allows the implementation of client-side prefetching and buffering code for streaming media entirely in JavaScript. It is compatible with, but should not be confused with, the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) specification, and neither requires the use of the other, although many EME implementations are only capable of decrypting media data provided via MSE.
Microsoft Edge is a proprietary cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. Released in 2015 along with both Windows 10 and Xbox One, it was initially built with Microsoft's own proprietary browser engine, EdgeHTML, and their Chakra JavaScript engine. Later on, it was ported to Android and iOS as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project. In late 2018, Microsoft announced it would completely rebuild Edge as a Chromium-based browser with Blink and V8 engines, which allowed the browser to be ported to macOS. The new Edge was publicly released in January 2020, and on Xbox platforms in 2021. Microsoft has since terminated security support for the original browser. Edge is also available on older Windows versions until early 2023, as well as Linux.
uBlock Origin is a free and open-source browser extension for content filtering, including ad blocking. The extension is available for Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Firefox, Brave, Opera, Pale Moon, as well as versions of Safari before 13. uBlock Origin has received praise from technology websites and is reported to be much less memory-intensive than other extensions with similar functionality. uBlock Origin's stated purpose is to give users the means to enforce their own (content-filtering) choices.
JPEG XL is a royalty-free raster-graphics file format that supports both lossy and lossless compression. It is designed to outperform existing raster formats and thus become their universal replacement.
Due to constraints of the iOS platform, all browsers must be built on top of the WebKit rendering engine.
For the record, even I am not exclusively using Pale Moon either, because the web simply is too Google-centric at the moment. I do use it for the vast majority of sites but there are a few like Youtube and some sites which are simply not interested in being browser agnostic where I use Edge, instead.
Flow's goal is to render every website correctly... but there is currently a long way left to go.
Please note that we're still early in development, and many web platform features are missing or broken. It's going to take a long time before Ladybird is ready for day-to-day browsing.
This project does not cater to non-technical users.
Removed for KF6, the 'kf5' branch contains the last maintained state.