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November 23, 2016

Web browser benchmarks: Firefox vs. Waterfox vs. Pale Moon vs. Chromium vs. Chrome



 
Webbrowser_Benchmarks

I was curious how some browser perform and what kind of web browser benchmarks were available, so I ran Kraken, SunSpider, HTML5, JetStream, Octane 2.0 and Acid3 on Firefox, Waterfox, Pale Moon, Chromium and Chrome. Here are the results with my rig 2600k @ 4.4Ghz, 16GB RAM, Samsung 840 EVO SSD.

Kraken & Sunspider -> lower is better, in every other test bigger is better. I ran each test 5 times and calculated the average. I also made some Google docs sheet:
Link .

Firefox 44 EME-free 64-bitWaterfox 43.0.4 64-bitPalemoon 26.0.2 64-bitChromium 50.0.2641.0 64-bitGoogle Chrome 48.0.2564.103 64-bit Iron 48.0.2550.0 64-bit Vivaldi 1.0.344.37 (Beta 2) (32-bit) Cyberfox 44.0.2 64-bit midori 0.5.11 32-bit Qupzilla 1.8.9 64-bit GNUIceCat 38.6.0 32-bit
Download Kraken: 907.2ms ± 1.6%
SunSpider: 158.1ms ± 4.7%
HTML5 Test: 461 out of 555 points
JetStream: 177.13 ± 31.144
Octane 2.0: 32297
Acid3: 99/100
Source: https://www.kaputniks.org/web-browser-benchmarks-firefox-chrome/

It seems to me that Chromium, Waterfox and Firefox are head on head. However Chromium passes more HTML5 tests and on top of that the Kraken (931/919/907 ms) and SunSpider (164/171/158 ms) tests differ by mere milliseconds. So I’d say the overall winner out of these 3 is Chromium.
If we throw Google Chrome into the pool of candidates then the result is quite different: Google Chrome wins the crown even if its SunSpider result is a mite slower than Pale Moon’s! If you know any other good web browser benchmarks or if you want other browser benchmarked, let me know in the comments or via contact form!
That said, take this benchmark test with a grain of salt. There are just too many factors involved for it to be a real representative test about browser speeds. In my opinion though it’s a good starting point.
Edit 2016-02-06: As I’ve been made aware on Reddit, none of the browsers passed the Acid3 test, because no animation was smooth. Something I oversaw. Apologies!
Edit 2016-02-17: A few browser have been added after the publication of this post. They’re marked with a right caret.