Which is the best browser for web performance? Well, that depends on what you mean by “best”. Fastest startup? Best to run JavaScript? Highest frames-per-second on live applications like streaming media and games? For our purposes, let’s look at which browser loads web pages the fastest. Just for fun.
Results
Using the results from our previous experiments, we gathered results for the three different browsers we tested: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer 9. The following data points are the results averaged from the results over all the pages we tested, taken only from the Dulles test location.
The exact browser versions we tested were:
- Chrome 28.0.1500.72
- Firefox 22.0.0.4917
- IE 9.0.8112.16421
Internet Explorer was the fastest of the three?? Yeah, apparently Microsoft has gotten their act together and made Internet Explorer really, really fast. According to our data, IE9 almost 7% faster than Chrome and 13% faster than Firefox. (Of course with our optimized website, it’s not a great numerical difference, but for a website that takes 4 seconds to load on IE, this means that, if this 13% relationship holds, the same website would take over a half second longer to load on Firefox.)
As with Load Time, the results for Time to Start Render, or the point where the browser starts drawing the page on the screen, show IE9 and Chrome very close together with Firefox trailing behind.
Not surprisingly, all three browsers show very similar results as to the actual number of bytes downloaded. Each is within ±2% of the others. Fluctuations like this are expected.
Throughput is a very important and frequently used measure of speed. The more bytes a browser can download per second, the faster everything will display. Once again, Internet Explorer comes out on top of both Chrome and Firefox, showing a 9% improvement over Chrome and a 14% improvement over Firefox.
During our benchmark analysis, we saw a huge difference in the number of requests between different browsers. At the time, we determined that these were due to frequent and strange failed requests being counted alongside the successful ones, and we guessed it was likely an error on WebPageTest’s end. For our most recent results, we see no such large fluctuations in the total number of requests. Obviously there will still be some minor difference since this is an average taken over many tests, and there could still have been some failed requests involved, but for the most part it looks like that particular problem has either cleared up or normalized in some way. In terms of comparing the three browsers, all are pretty close to one another, generating an average of 25-26 requests per page.
Conclusions
For these tests, we were strictly measuring page speed and other factors related to page speed. Other, often just as important, factors to consider when comparing these browsers are things like ease of use, startup time, security, and feature set. (Personally, I’m sticking with Chrome.)
Going on page load speed alone however, IE9 is the clear winner of the three, though not by a great margin in our data. Let’s see what the rest of the internet has to say about which browser is fastest.
Browser Comparisons Across The Web
Top Ten Reviews gives a score out of 10 for “Speed and Compatibility”. Since this score involves more than just page speed, it is incompatible with the results we got. However, looking just at their respective “Navigation Times”, Chrome and IE nearly tie at 4.4 and 4.5 seconds respectively, leaving Firefox’s 5.7 seconds in the dust. Despite this, IE had a much lower score for Speed and Compatibility than either Chrome or Firefox due to security vulnerabilities. These tests were done using Internet Explorer 9, Chrome 24, and Firefox 21, so earlier versions of Chrome and Firefox than we tested.
PC Magazine, on the other hand didn’t have a straightforward rating for “page load time”, but it ranked Chrome as the best for running JavaScript, while Internet Explorer was ranked best overall. Firefox isn’t even ranked except in a three-way tie with Chrome and IE for hardware acceleration. Again, though, these tests were done using earlier versions of Chrome and Firefox than we were, versions 23 and 17 respectively.
So between our results and their results, the conclusions are a bit mixed as to which is the “best” browser in terms of download speed. One thing everyone seems to conclude though is that IE and Chrome are the top two browsers available for speed. Firefox appears to be falling behind in this regard. Between our own data and other similar findings all across the web, we may be starting to chip away at IE’s long-standing reputation of being the absolute worst browser in existence. Maybe eventually it won’t be seen as such in the public’s eyes.