Last update: 28th April 2026

Choosing a browser might be an afterthought for many people, but for some reason it is something I have given a lot of thought to. As social media magnates have taken over public opinion and human interactions, I have become more wary of where and how my data is used. For this reason, I wanted to better understand which browser offers the best privacy options.

There is also another important point: many browsers claim to be private, but I find it increasingly difficult to verify these claims. Some browsers start with strong promises and then slowly add more and more features that no one asked for, often including private vendor links.

While trying Linux, I came across LibreWolf. Despite having enough guardrails to occasionally break some webpages (rarely), I really appreciated that it keeps no cookies by default.

For the purpose of understanding whether there are better options out there, I researched a few of the main browsers and classified them based on what is important to me: privacy, open source, performance, bloatware, extension compatibility, and ease of use.

Disclaimer: this post is best read on desktop.

Comparison table

Browser	Engine	Privacy	OpenSource	Performance	Bloat	Extensions	Ease of use	Development
Safari	Webkit	mid-high	No	*****	Very low	limited		Active
Google chrome	Chromium	very low	No	****	High	high		Active
Firefox	Gecko	mid	Yes	***	Low	high		Active
Brave	Chromium	mid-high	No	****	mid-high	high
Opera	Chromium	mid	No	****	High	high		Active
Vivaldi	Chromium	mid	No	****	High	high		Active
Tor	Gecko	very high	Yes	**	Low	low	!	Active
Mullvad Browser	Gecko	very high	Yes	**	Very low	low	!	Active
Librewolf	Gecko	high	Yes	***	Very low	high	!!	Active
Waterfox	Gecko	high	Yes	***	Low	high		Active
Helium Browser	Chromium	unaudited	No	****	Low	high		Active

There are significant differences in the engine used by the browsers. Nowadays, there are 3 dominant ones:

WebKit

• Developed by: Apple
• Used in: Safari and all iOS browsers. And now, Helium.
• Characteristics:
  • Focus on performance and energy efficiency (important for Apple devices)
  • Tight integration with Apple’s ecosystem
  • On iOS, all browsers must use WebKit under the hood

---

Gecko

• Developed by: Mozilla
• Used in: Firefox and derivatives
• Characteristics:
  • Strong emphasis on open web standards and privacy
  • Independent engine (not based on Chromium)
  • Uses its own CSS engine (Stylo) and rendering pipeline
  • Slower than chromium based browsers or Safari (webkit)

---

Chromium/Blink

• Developed by: Google (open-source project)
• Used in: Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, and derivatives
• Characteristics:
  • Dominant engine on desktop
  • Large ecosystem and fast feature adoption
  • Includes Blink (rendering engine) and V8 (JavaScript engine)
  • Very fast, but high RAM and energy consumption.

Other notes

Librewolf

Librewolf is great, but comes with an important caveat in MacOS. As of 2026, the developers do not want to pay to apple 100usd a year and decided to not sign this app. This comes at a price; if you decide to install it in MacOS, the app will come as unsigned and it won’t let you open it.
To solve this issue, you need to run a couple of commands on the terminal. Personally this doesn’t bother me but it can be an issue for newcomers. I do also agree with the principle that noone should be paying apple just to run an application in your computer.

Tor and Mullvad

Tor and Mullvar are based on the tor network. Due their multiple fingerprint protections and layers, they will never be the fastest browsers but will definitely be the most private.