What are the best web browsers for Windows?

Each month, over 1.7 million people use Slant to find the best products and share their knowledge. Pick the tags you’re passionate about to get a personalized feed and begin contributing your knowledge.

score 13 · Answer 1

Mozilla Firefox

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Free, open source and community driven

Firefox is available as a free download. All Mozilla software is licensed under the Mozilla Public License. Instructions on how to obtain the source code can be found here. See More

Top Con

Installing some extensions still requires restarting the browser

While some of the developers already allow users to install their extensions without the need to restart the browser, not all of the extensions have been updated to support non-restart installation yet, as some developers have yet to add special code to do so. See More

Top Pro

Strong developer tool

The built-in developer tools have been merged with the popular FireBug extension since FF57. See More

Top Con

Installs Addons with updates

Mozilla is installing/integrating addons with every update like the Mr.Robot promotion - it also has integrated Pocket that spams you evertime you open the browser or a new tab with partners of Pocket. See More

Top Pro

Awesome customizability

Top Con

Unstable add-ons

E10s has already caused many extensions to not work properly. Also, in November, only add-ons with WebExtension API can be installed. See More

Top Pro

Syncs between devices

Firefox Sync is an optional feature in Firefox that allows syncing bookmarks, passwords, and add-ons between devices. See More

Top Con

Updates not in sync with updates of (key) extensions

A key extension can suddenly becomes useless because extension updates tend to fall behind the updates of Firefox. See More

Top Pro

Good font rasterizing

Font rasterizing on Windows is much better than in competitors. Even smaller text is clear and contrast. See More

Top Con

Very very slow

Not only is it slow to load, but individual tabs take MUCH longer to load than any other browser out there. See More

Top Pro

Text-to-speech (with adjustable speed) without add-ons

Firefox Reader Mode includes Narrate, a feature that adds text-to-speech functionality to the browser. See More

Top Con

No support for ALSA since version 52

You must use PulseAudio if you need sound in Firefox. See More

Top Pro

Easy screenshots without extensions

Within the browser itself, you can easily take screenshots and save them to your computer. See More

Top Con

Doesn't care for its original guidelines/goals

Mozilla originally aimed to be the "good guys" with user choice and privacy in mind. Their current leadership cannot be trusted to hold those goals in high regard: 1) Added Pocket - a privacy data sensitive plugin, made it mandatory. 2) Tried to sneak in advertisement as "drive-by hack", backpedaled unconvincingly once users complained: https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-backpedals-after-mr-robot-firefox-misstep/ 3) Tried to randomly inject a small percentage of Firefox downloads in Germany with a data collecting plugin (Cliqz) that tech-savy Germans consider adware (no opt-out question asked) : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1406647 See More

Top Pro

Use Less Resource

Firefox 57 (Quantum) and newer uses less resources than ever. It is proven with benchmark done by AppleInsider. See More

Top Con

Switches from HTTP version of a page to its HTTPS version wtihout notification

Even though the HTTPS page might have different content (yes bad website design, but if your browser does something automatically you don't expect, it should tell you). See More

Top Pro

High performance

The Firefox Quantum update (FF57) greatly increases the render speed and general performance of the browser, by taking better advantage of the user's hardware. See More

Top Con

Slow performance in OS X

Uses a lot of resources and feels slower than the Linux and Windows versions. See More

Top Pro

Lower memory fingerprint than competitors

Firefox used to be a trailer in memory usage, but as of 2017 it's less hungry for memory than competitors like Edge, Chrome, Safari and Opera. See More

Top Con

Heavy and consumes a lot of memory

Mozilla developers should think on this as the new Microsoft Edge browser steals less memory and it just pops up the moment you open it. In the case of Mozilla, you have to wait for after clicking it for opening it. See More

Top Pro

Tagging bookmarks

Firefox is one of the few browsers that you can tag your bookmarks. You can view a list of tags and can search your bookmarks in the address bar with tags. See More

Top Con

Poor enterprise support

Does not use standard management tools such as GPO or Profile management. No MSI. See More

Top Pro

Fast bookmark management

In order to add an open page to the bookmark bar, the tab can be dragged down and is added immediately. See More

Top Con

Uses GTK on Linux/BSD

Makes the integration on non-GTK Desktop Environments very hard. See More

Top Pro

Reader View

Reader View in Firefox allows users to read an article without any distractions by removing ads, unrelated elements and other distractive objects (similar to Microsoft Edge's Reading Mode and Safari's reader mode). See More

Top Pro

Automatically updated

Firefox is automatically updated on the platforms where it makes sense. See More

Top Pro

Ethical and pragmatic company mission

The Mozilla Manifesto outlines the company's mission and principles. Paraphrasing, they want the Internet to be a free and open resource, and to enable individuals to get the best use of that resource. They do this by creating open source software to which anyone may contribute, so long as such contributions fit with their principles (both ethical and technical). See More

Top Pro

Strong HTML5 feature support

Firefox scores strongly on HTML5 feature support. See More

Top Pro

Integration with Pocket

Firefox comes with build-in Pocket integration that can allow users to quickly save the article for a read it later function to easily find any articles saved in Pocket from various sources and devices. See More

Top Pro

Multi-account containers

Specs

Default Search Engine:Yahoo!

Default Adblocker:Disconnect (Simple OR Strict)

See All

score 6 · Answer 2

Vivaldi

Top Pro

Custom search engines

You can add as many search engines as you like. For example you can set up one for YouTube, one for Wikipedia, or whatever you want: you need only the URL of the search and it can be used from the URL bar (by prefixing it's nickname, yt for YouTube for example). See More

Top Con

No option to force links to open in new tabs

Similar to other browsers, there's no option for forcing all links to open in new tabs. See More

Top Pro

Tabs can be stacked

Tabs can be grouped under a single tab to easily keep track of all open webpages. See More

Top Con

Not available on your Phone/Tablet

Vivaldi is neither available on Android or iOS See More

Top Pro

Compatible with most Chrome extensions

Since Vivaldi is built on WebKit, the same engine Chrome (among other browsers) is built on, it was possible for Vivaldi developers to allow Chrome extensions to run in their browser. See More

Top Con

Can't protect pinned tabs from changing to another URL

Clicking on a page link, then another, easy to wind up far from the original pinned tab site. There is no chrome addon or native vivaldi function to stop this. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Vivaldi is available on Windows, Linux and OSX. See More

Top Con

No VPN

Top Pro

Built for power users

Vivaldi includes lots of niche functionality such as the ability to move tabs to any side of the screen, turn images on and off, or render pages with monospace fonts. See More

Top Con

No automatic page translation

Unlike Chrome, it doesn't automatically translate pages that are not in your language. See More

Top Pro

Ability to search through settings, history, open tabs, bookmarks in one place

A feature called Quick Commands (accessed via Ctrl + Q) allows quickly getting to settings, history, open tabs, bookmarks with incremental search. See More

Top Pro

Full of customizable keyboard shortcuts (can be completely keyboard-driven)

It's possible to change and add keyboard shortcuts for basically all commands. It also has single key shortcuts to execute actions with one click. See More

Top Pro

Mouse gestures

Integrated mouse gestures. Fully configurable as of Vivaldi 1.2 (snapshot available now). Allows for navigating the web, switching tabs, closing windows, opening settings etc. with a flick of the mouse. See More

Top Pro

Notes

A notes panel allows leaving notes on webpages and can include screenshots for reference and have tags and organized in folders to help manage them. See More

Top Pro

Cross browser extensions with Opera and Chrome, Firefox web-ext's too

All Vivaldi, Opera and Chrome users can get extensions from all extension/addon sites, especially from Opera Addons and Chrome Store. See More

Top Pro

Reader mode

Vivaldi has a built-in reader mode so you can remove all the clutter in news pages and read only the content, you can also customise the reader mode, like font size, style and colours. See More

Top Pro

Tab bar position can be changed

Users can change tab bar position to top, bottom left or right See More

Top Pro

Non-closable fixed tabs

A setting lets you prevent closing fixed tabs so you don't close anything important by accident. See More

Top Pro

Built-in page capture

Vivaldi can grab a picture of the whole webpage or part of it and saves it automatically inside a note or as a file in your disk. See More

Top Pro

VPN is available by extension- also routing through Tor network

VPN and Tor encryption is possible through extensions. Tor is a free choice if one doesn't want to subscribe to a VPN service. See More

Top Pro

Customizable UI

Since Vivaldi uses JavaScript, React, Node.js, Browserify and multiple npm packages to build the browser, it can be customized with ease by anyone who knows HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Vivaldi can change the colors across the browser and has the option to change the color automatically depending on the page. Also, page loading animations are available in the address bar. See More

Top Pro

Tab behaviour can be customised

The order you toggle, open, close or clone tabs can be modified to match a workflow that best works for you. For example you can choose tabs to toggle in recent order so you can go back and forth between the last most useful tabs without needing to change their position on the tab bar. See More

Top Pro

Allows navigating to the next page without searching for the link

A feature called fast forward puts a dedicated button before the address bar that is designed to help you navigate to the next page of a multi-page article, forum thread or search results without having to hunt for the link. See More

Top Pro

WebRTC IP leaking can be disabled

A built-in setting called "Broadcast IP" will stop the IP leaking with WebRTC when disabled. See More

Top Pro

Faster than Firefox or Chrome

Top Pro

Web Panels

Web Panels allow for easy access to any site from the side panel. They are useful for reading two websites side by side or for chatting (i.e. Facebook) and surfing at the same time. Panels can be hidden when not in use. See More

Specs

Default Search Engine:Bing

See All

score 7 · Answer 3

Google Chrome

Top Pro

Syncs between devices

By logging into Chrome using a Google account it's possible to sync history, extensions, passwords, bookmarks and other settings between devices. This makes it great for anyone working with multiple devices as it allows experiencing consistent context when in the browser. See More

Top Con

Huge memory hog

Each tab and extension in the browser uses significant chunks of RAM, giving the browser poor performance on machines without enough RAM to supply. See More

Top Pro

Excellent HTML 5 feature support

As of February 2015, Chrome scores highest of all browsers for HTML5 compatibility. See More

Top Con

Online tracking by default

Chrome allows opting out of tracking by going to Settings > Advanced > Privacy and un-checking any unwanted services. Alternatively Chromium can be used to get a similar browser experience without Google's services on top of it. See More

Top Pro

Simple user interface

For example, the address bar is also the search bar. Google calls it Omnibox. See More

Top Con

Increasingly slow

When Chrome first came out, it was known for being lightweight and very speedy. Over the years, more and more features have been added to Chrome. Because of this, crashes, errors, and general laggy-ness has increased noticeably. See More

Top Pro

Plenty of extensions

Top Con

Bad for battery life

Drains battery life on both Windows laptops and Macs much quicker than the alternatives. It can shave hours off the battery life of any non Chromebook laptop. See More

Top Pro

Backed and supported by Google

Whilst Chrome is based on the open source browser Chromium), Google reviews this code and build on top of it. This means it takes (and contributes to) a number of the benefits of the open source model whilst having the resources, support and investment of a major company. See More

Top Con

Proprietary

Google Chrome is proprietary software, meaning that it is not open source. See More

Top Pro

Automatically updates

Chrome updates in the background ensuring you're always on the latest version. This makes it much more likely that sites will work on your browser, since (almost) all Chrome users will be running exactly the same version. See More

Top Con

Does not hardware accelerate HTML5 video correctly

Chrome is unable to hardware accelerate HTML5 video correctly which makes playing 4k video on laptops a poor experience filled with lag. Though there is a workaround for YouTube in that a plugin can be installed to force Flash playback instead of HTML5, which plays smoothly and has no HW acceleration issues. There's another plugin (h264ify) that will force to use the h.264 codec video if available instead of the VP9 one which is the resource hog. See More

Top Pro

Installs extensions without requiring a restart

Top Con

Gives too much weight to Google on the future of the Web

Top Pro

Multiple account login

You can have multiple Chromes with different accounts logged at the same time. And it is really easy to manage different accounts. See More

Top Pro

Great built-in developer tools

Chrome comes with built-in developer tools, making testing and enhancing web pages simpler for those of us involved in working with such technologies. As well as being beneficial to developers, this also has some benefit to non-technical users; in that by making testing simpler for developers those developers are more likely to use Chrome for their tests, and can spend more time making improvements over investigating underlying causes of issues. See More

Top Pro

Good performance

According to TopTen Reviews, Chrome is currently one of the best performing browsers for initial (cold) startup, average startup, and navigation times. See More

Top Pro

Sandboxed Tabs

Every tab runs as their own process, so if one crashes or becomes unresponsive, the whole browser isn't affected. See More

Top Pro

Free

It's free to use. See More

Top Pro

Customizable by user

Each of the managed users can have their own configuration (themes, extensions, ...) See More

Top Pro

Works great with many extensions

Unlike Firefox, Google Chrome can keep its fast performance regardless of how many extensions are installed. With more than 10 extensions Firefox gets slower and slower in a geometric progression rate. Google Chrome doesn't care how many extensions the user has installed - 3 or 133 it still performs great. See More

Top Pro

Multimedia Plugins and Codecs included

Google Chrome comes with its own flashplayer and the most common multimedia codecs so you don't have to worry that they are outdated nor do you need to install them as a third party package. See More

Top Pro

Huge variety of extensions available

Specs

Default Search Engine:Google

See All

score 7 · Answer 4

Opera

Top Pro

VPN onboard

Free and fast VPN onboard, includes Germany, Canada, USA, Netherlands, Singapore. See More

Top Con

Opera is owned by a Chinese Consortium

Who certainly need to conform with Chinese government requirements to let them infiltrate everything you do online. See More

Top Pro

AdBlocker onboard

It's possible to add own filter lists. The internal adblocker is faster than any external. See More

Top Con

Proprietary

While Opera is currently available gratis (without monetary charge), it is currently not libre (meaning that it does not allow users to view the source code used to create, to modify that code, or to redistribute modifications) and is therefor neither free nor open-source software. See More

Top Pro

Customizable

Opera is full of user controlled settings. Everything can be imported and exported even RSS feeds. It can be skinned in a variety of different themes or it can be extended through the use of a large number of plugins available. See More

Top Con

Basically a Chrome clone

The latest versions of Opera are basically Chrome clones, so they really don't add anything new. See More

Top Pro

Opera Sync

Opera Sync allows you to synchronize your bookmarks, passwords, and more from any computer, phone, or tablet. See More

Top Con

Buggy

Some buggy or confusing behavior with the bookmarks bar and moving tabs. Also, for me, the entire windows turn black after a while. See More

Top Pro

Battery saving mode

Top Con

Cannot select tabs

Unlike in Chrome and Vivaldi, one cannot select multiple tabs to move to another/new window. See More

Top Pro

Speed Dial

Opera's Speed Dial (new tab page) has the ability to hold as many websites as you want, and you can customize it almost however you want. You can also organize the websites on the Speed Dial into folders. See More

Top Pro

Portable

You can save the Opera's setup files on a USB hard drive and run its portable version anywhere. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Source code available on GitHub. See More

Top Pro

You can install extensions on the sidebar

Unlike other browsers, you can install add-ons such as tabs, bookmarks, history, sessions, notes, and extension manager in the sidebar. So you have the flexibility to use it for your purpose. See More

Top Pro

Opera turbo

Opera has a functionality called Turbo which increases browsers speed and reduces data consumption considerably by compressing the data that's found in a web page. See More

Top Pro

Strong HTML5 feature support

Opera scores highly on HTML5 feature support. See More

Top Pro

Video pop-out feature

You can pop-out any video and it will stay on top while you are surfing on other tabs. See More

Top Pro

Compatible with Chrome extensions

Since Opera is built on WebKit, the same engine Chrome (among other browsers) is built on, it was possible for Opera developers to allow Chrome extensions to run in their browser. See More

Specs

Default Search Engine:Google

Default Adblocker:Adblocker

Built-in VPN:Opera's own free VPN

See All

score 3 · Answer 5

Brave Browser

Top Pro

Built-in Adblocker

This feature ensures an ad-less web experience, while also having a performance improvement in loading websites up to 4 times faster. See More

Top Con

Still a bit new

Top Pro

Free and Open Source

It is a free to use browser in Android and also open source, so anyone can help contribute to the browser. See More

Top Pro

Privacy Protection

Brave protects users with privacy and security features such as HTTPS Everywhere, script blocking, 3rd party cookie blocking, and private incognito tabs. See More

Specs

Price:Free

Required Android Version:4.1 and Above

Developer:Brave Software

Android version:1.0.30

See All

score 2 · Answer 6

Pale Moon

Top Pro

Firefox add-on support

It even supports some add-ons that are not available on Firefox anymore. See More

Top Con

Not many Firefox extension work with it

Pale Moon is based off of an old version of Firefox, which means many of Firefox's extensions now do not work for such an old version, making the selection of extensions quite limited. See More

Specs

Default Search Engine:DuckDuckGo

See All