When comparing Puffin vs Qutebrowser, the Slant community recommends Qutebrowser for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop web browsers?” Qutebrowser is ranked 17th while Puffin is ranked 38th. The most important reason people chose Qutebrowser is:
With suggestions/auto-complete to reduce the learning curve.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Renders Flash
Games and videos. Most mobile browsers don't support it.
Pro Seriously fast
In tests performed by PhoneArena, Puffin consistently outperformed any other browser both on synthetic JavaScript speed tests as well as real world cold page loads.
Pro Optional touchpad and cursor
Some websites require hover.
Pro Data savings
Puffin servers can compress pictures before you download them for faster page downloads and data savings for capped data plans.
Pro Loads banned websites
It loads websites which other browsers don't.
Pro Built-in reading mode
Reading mode allows removing everything on a page but the content. It removes ads, styling and anything else that could get in the way of a comfortable reading experience.
Pro Vim-style keyboard shortcuts and commands for rapid navigation
With suggestions/auto-complete to reduce the learning curve.
Pro Fast and light on resource usage
Pro Highly customizable
And quite easy to configure. You can even write your own config.
Pro Great for Privacy
Makes no unexpected network requests by default, unlike most other browsers (Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Firefox, etc).
Pro Userscripts
Call custom scripts on web pages or links (hinting mode).
You can use this for downloading of videos (youtube-dl, adfree), saving web pages as pdf or adding news sources to your RSS reader (newsboat).
Cons
Con Logs browsing history
According to their privacy policy, they log the URLs of all websites visited by their users.
Con Poor privacy
Con No apple mobile version
There is an Android version, but no iOS and ipadOS version yet. Iphone and ipad users are out of luck for that time being.
Con No adblocker
It doesnt have a adblocker unlike the pro version.
Con Blocked in some countries
Puffin is blocked in China, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
Con Rendering flash has ads
Con Software rendering only with Nouveau Drivers
Con Steep learning curve
If you're not a vim user, it will take some time to get used to the shortcuts.
Con Slow
As it is mainly written in Python, it's startup is slower than the competition.