What are the best browsers for web development?

Question

14

Options
Considered

394

User
Recs.

39 mins

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 10 OptionsWhy?

Best browsers for web development	Price	Platforms	Browser Engine
90 Mozilla Firefox	-	Windows; macOS; Linux; Android; iOS	Gecko
87 Google Chrome	Free	Linux; macOS; Windows; Android; iOS	Blink
86 Chromium	-	Windows; macOS (Intel only); Linux; Google Chrome OS	-
83 Firefox Developer Edition	0	-	-
-- Vivaldi	Free	Windows; macOS; Linux	Blink

See Full List

9 Other Options Considered

Google Chrome

Top Pro

Great developer tools

Can map web resources like CSS and JS to files on disk, so you can make edits directly from the debugger. If you change the files, the website seamlessly updates with new functionality. See More

Top Con

Uses lots of memory

Chrome spins up separate processes for different tabs. This gives better isolation from crashes, at the cost of using more memory! See More

Justin Chung's Experience

Some js frameworks such as vuejs have a chrome extension for easier development although you should test your website on all the popular browsers such as firefox, safari, ie and chrome itself. See More

Specs

Default Search Engine:Google

Platforms:Linux; macOS; Windows; Android; iOS

Browser Engine:Blink

Bookmark Tags:No

See All Specs

Top Pro

Great CSS3 animation debugging

In the inspection tab you can fallow the animation frame by frame. See More

Top Con

Proprietary/not open source

Chrome is based on Chromium, an open source project. Google adds auto-update and usage and crash telemetry. Learn more: https://fossbytes.com/difference-google-chrome-vs-chromium-browser/ See More

Electrux Redsworth's Experience

Has some quirks, but is great to work on/with. See More

Top Pro

Great responsive mode

Has a bunch of predefined devices to choose from, ability to add custom devices, has mode that enables dragging to change resolution. It's also the smoothest when resizing in responsive mode (doesn't flicker on repaints like Firefox). See More

Top Con

Not privacy-friendly

CoolCymopoleia's Experience

Does not work in Mac Safe Mode See More

Top Pro

Very strong profiling abilities

Google also has a lot of video guide for how to use them properly and what to use each profiler for. 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

Strong community of extension developers

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

Can offer good suggestions for how to improve your site

The audits tab in the dev tools has lots of great suggestions for performance in different areas (network utilization, page performance and load times, etc). 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

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

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

Excellent HTML 5 feature support

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

Top Con

No mobile extensions

Chrome on Android and iOS does not support extensions. See More

Top Pro

Offline storage support on all technology

Web SQL, IndexedDB (webWorker), Local/Session Storage, App Cache, Service worker. See More

Top Con

Hard/impossible to transfer passwords to a different machine without uploading them to Google

Top Pro

Debugging Node.js server side

Top Con

Big target for hackers

Chrome is the most popular browser in the world. That makes it the most targeted browser in the world by hackers. See More

Top Pro

Find network bugs with Chrome's built-in net-internals

A network troubleshooting tool, net-internals is built into Chrome and Chrome devices. Use chrome://net-internals to isolate TCP/IP-related issues. 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

Allows easy mobile device (Android) debugging/inspection

chrome://inspect can be used to easily debug any Android device using Chrome. See More

Top Con

Blurred fonts on Windows

Fonts on Windows are blurred, that is especially noticeable in light fonts on dark background. Small italic text is hard to read. 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

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

Simple user interface

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

Top Pro

Fast rendering

Renders HTML pages very fast. As a Google's commercial shows, Chrome renders HTML pages faster than a gun shot. 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 Pro

Backed and supported by Google

Whilst Chrome is based on the open-source browser Chromium), Google reviews this code and builds 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 Pro

Customizable by user

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

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

See All

Chromium

Top Pro

Free and open source

Top Con

May not have Google API integration

Depending on the distributor, Chromium may not have any Google API keys, which means you can't use Google services. See More

Specs

Default Search Engine:Google

Platforms:Windows; macOS (Intel only); Linux; Google Chrome OS

Price:FOSS

Bookmark Tags:Yes

See All Specs

Top Pro

Superset of Google Chrome

Top Con

Doesn't report crashes

Crashes are not reported automatically to Google. See More

Top Pro

Supports all of Google Chrome features

As Chrome is based on Chromium they overlap in supported features. Chromium syncs between devices, automatically updates, has great built-in developer tools, installs extensions without a restart, includes a combined text bar for entering URLs and searching and has excellent HTML5 compatibility just like Chrome. See More

Top Pro

Provides latest debugging features

The browser updates frequently and is on the bleeding edge when it comes to new features. See More

Top Pro

Completely open source

Unlike Google Chrome, Chromium is completely open source. See More

Top Pro

Sandboxing

Every tab and plugin runs in its own subprocess so they will never affect the whole browser ,however that consumes more memory than other browsers See More

See All

Vivaldi

Top Pro

Designed for power users

Top Con

No automatic page translation

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

MightyDogoda's Experience

I don't know but some css code wont work in this browser See More

Specs

Default Search Engine:Bing

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

Browser Engine:Blink

Top Pro

Chrome's debugging tools

Since Vivaldi is built over Chromium it comes with the Chromium developer tools, meaning you have all the same tools as Chromium or Chrome. See More

Top Con

Closed source

While Vivaldi is currently available gratis (without monetary charge), it is currently not fully 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, therefore, neither free nor open-source software. The C++ source code however is open-source under a BSD license and can be downloaded and browsed from here. The UI code, though not open-source, is easily readable as it's HTML, CSS & JS. Modifications can be shared as their forum even has a dedicated section. See More

Top Pro

Tab tiling

Tabs can be put in a side-by-side or grid view to make comparisons or read and keep track of multiple pages at the same time. The feature can be toggled on Tab Stacks or by selecting the tabs with Ctrl+clicking. See More

Top Con

New and buggy

Still working out a few kinks, not entirely optimized yet so it can be a little slow or resource intensive. The latest versions have much improved performance though. See More

Top Pro

Tab stacks

Tabs can be grouped under a single tab to easily group similar tabs. See More

Top Con

Not available on your Phone/Tablet

Vivaldi is currently only available for desktop operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac). Though the developers have already said that they plan to release it. See More

Top Pro

Chrome extensions support

As Vivaldi is built over Chromium it supports Chrome extensions. See More

Top Con

Proprietary

While Vivaldi is currently available gratis (without monetary charge), it is currently not fully 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 therefore neither free nor open-source software. The C++ source code however is open-source under a BSD license and can be downloaded and browsed from here. The UI code though is not open-source, but it's easily readable as it's HTML, CSS & JS. Modifications can be shared as their forum even has a dedicated section. See More

Top Pro

Notes

A notes panel allows leaving notes about webpages, they can include screenshots for reference. It has tags as well as folders to help manage them. See More

Top Con

High RAM usage

As Vivaldi is built over Chromium it has the same bad RAM performance of Google Chrome or any other Chromium browser. As the Vivaldi UI is also technically a webpage it uses slightly more RAM, around 40MB more. See More

Top Pro

Add websites as web panels for easy access

You can add sites as panels for easy access them. It allows reading two websites side by side with a simple click on the panel button. Useful for programming language documentation manuals like from DevDocs or Mozilla Developers. Panels can be hidden when not in use. See More

Top Con

No touch bar support

Top Pro

Can be completely keyboard-driven

All actions required to interact with the browser, like navigating webpages and changing settings can be performed using only the keyboard, no mouse required. See More

Top Con

Extensions miss hotkeys

You can set your shortcuts at vivaldi://extensions, but they do not work. See More

Top Pro

Mouse gestures

Integrated customisable mouse gestures. Allows for navigating the web, switching tabs, closing windows, opening settings and other actions with a flick of the mouse. See More

Top Con

No option to open saved tab stack as... tab stack!

You may save stack, but you can open it as separate tabs. Interesting that when you save session with stacks, you'll be able to open the stacks with inner settings of page tiling (size and zoom) as well. Contradiction worth of shame. See More

Top Pro

Scheduled theme change

Themes can be scheduled to be set at a particular point in time. You can set up a light theme during day and a dark one during night time. See More

Top Con

Comes with many Ads

After installation the first thing you have to do is to remove all the default bookmarks and quickdial links which is really annoying. There is more minor stuff like the default search provider or your start page things that could be easily managed with a wizard at the first startup. 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 Con

No silent background updates

Unlike most modern browsers, Vivaldi doesn't have the option to update silently in the background. It gives you a dialog box when an update comes out. Worse, the box doesn't warn you that not updating the browser could lead to security risks. That could be pretty bad for your average joe, who doesn't know computers that well. See More

Top Pro

Custom keyboard shortcuts

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

Top Con

Same security-holes as Chrome

Vivaldi uses the same browser engine as Chrome, meaning it has the same security-holes as Chrome. Chrome is a big target for hackers (being the most popular browser in the world), and a webpage that will hack Chrome will also hack Vivaldi. 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 Con

Telemetry

According to its privacy policy, Vivaldi sends an approximate location, randomized ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message every 24 hours. 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 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

Tab bar position can be changed

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

Top Con

No essential tools for web development

Top Pro

Manage bookmarks very well

Vivaldi has an excellent bookmarks system. Bookmarks can be easily accessible via Speed Dial, side-bar, bookmarks bar, quick commands. No more messy bookmarks bar is needed and location bar suggestion is improved thus! See More

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 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

Analytical history

View graphically the most visited pages on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis. See More

Top Pro

The UI can be customized with ease

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. 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

Cross-platform

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

See All

Brave

Top Pro

Option to disable additional privacy concerns

Like fingerprint tracking. See More

Specs

Default Search Engine:Google

Platforms:Android; iOS; macOS; Windows; Linux

Browser Engine:Blink

Price:Free

See All Specs

Top Pro

Planned optional feature for you to get reimbursed for viewing ads

Basic Attention Token; you will be able to opt into a new blockchain-based digital advertising system, giving publishers a better deal and users a share of the ad revenue for their attention. See More

Top Pro

Tor is available right in the browser

Top Pro

Option to pay supported sites based on view time percentage

Set up automatic micro-donations. Brave will automatically divide a monthly donation among the top sites you visit. And/or, you can decide which sites get what percentage of your donation. It’s called pinning. See More

Top Pro

Built in Adblock

Contains an optional "Allow Brave Acceptable Ads" So you can support the site you truly enjoy. See More

Top Pro

Safety and privacy well taken care of

Things like https everywhere and no tracking are standard with Brave. In most other browsers, things like these are optional at best. See More

Top Pro

Free/libre software

Released to the community under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), this software respect the FSF's four freedoms, including the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute with or without modification freely. See More

Top Pro

Open source

See All

Opera

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

WebKit/Blink is not customisable or lightweight

Opera is built on WebKit/Blink, which means it shares cons of Chromium: high RAM usage (Not lightweight), lack of customizability. See More

Specs

Default Search Engine:Google

Default Adblocker:Adblocker

Built-in VPN:Opera's own free VPN

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 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

Battery saving mode

Top Con

Uneditable default search providers

It can not delete or replace already built-in search services such as Yahoo, Google, DuckDuckGo, and Wikipedia. See More

Top Pro

The sidebar multi-message functionality

This is fantastic for keeping messages in their place yet easily accessible for work See More

Top Pro

Touch bar support

Top Pro

Blazingly fast

Scores top on Basemark. See More

Top Pro

Built-In adblocker

The built-In adblocker is faster than any extension. It's possible to add your own filter lists. However, the adblocker isn't enabled by default. 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

Top Pro

Strong HTML5 feature support

Opera scores highly on HTML5 feature support. See More

See All

Ghost Browser

Top Con

No essential tools for web development

Top Pro

Log into any website with multiple accounts in one window

Top Con

Doesn't support linux

Supports only windows and mac See More

Top Pro

Projects function removes the need to log in

With the new release (as of Dec 6th 2016), you can save a group of "Sessions" with logins stored to a Project, which you can launch with the click of a button. "Projects" eliminates the need to spend time setting up your workflow every day, so you can get right to work. See More

Top Con

Closed source

Top Pro

Save a set of isolated cookie jars into a project

Top Pro

Color coding for session organization

Different sessions are distinguishable by color for easier organization. You can also rename sessions to fit your needs. See More

Top Pro

Group your cookie jars

Top Pro

Developer tools for each session

The developer tools work just like Chrome, except that you can separate dev tools by session. See More

Top Pro

Assign a different proxy to each tab for international sites

See All

Safari

Top Pro

Excellent dev tools

Believe it or not, Safari has amazing dev tools, To enable them, go to the Preferences -> Advanced -> Show develop in the menu bar. There are many many options to help you with mobile site development, and much more. See More

Top Con

No Windows or Linux support

MightyDogoda's Experience

as we know this is not for windows or linux See More

Specs

Default Search Engine:Google

Browser Engine:WebKit

Price:Free

Top Pro

Works elegantly in OSX

The rendering of the pages and the browser compatibility with OSX works smoothly, when compared to other browsers. Also you get very high battery life with Safari, when compared to Chrome. See More

Top Con

Poor support for new web technologies

Safari usually takes its time when it comes to adopting new and useful web technologies meaning that the user gets an inferior experience compared to other modern browsers. See More

Top Pro

Good source map support

To use source maps, go to right click -> show page source and you can use the document browser on the left to navigate scripts. If a script has a source map, an arrow will appear next to it. You can click it to expand the file to show the source map. If you need more help go here. See More

Top Con

OSX only

Apple dropped Windows support after Safari 5. See More

Top Pro

Safari TP supports all ES2015/16/17 features

Safari is the first browser that supports all ES2015/16/17 features. (Currently the Tech Preview only.) See More

Top Con

Proprietary

While Safari is currently available gratis (without monetary charge) on Mac OS X, 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 therefore neither free nor open-source software. See More

Top Pro

Apple Pay support

You can use Apple Pay on any sites that support it See More

Top Con

Not very popular

Many people prefer the alternative Chrome, which may lead to less support. See More

Top Pro

Handoff and bookmark sync

Safari has a feature called handoff. This allows you to have a tab open on your computer, turn on your phone and swipe up on the Safari logo in the bottom left corner. Unlock your phone and the tab should be open. See More

See All

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