In 2022, which browsers use the least memory?

by | Jan 4, 2023 | Uncategorized

It’s no secret that browsers may use up a significant amount of memory on your machine. The majority of websites you visit use web apps, which can use as much memory as standard desktop software. Therefore, it’s crucial to monitor your memory consumption whether you’re using a high-end gaming PC or a worn-out laptop.

If you want to increase your workflow or simply stop having to worry about your games lagging because your browser is too greedy with RAM space, you must know which browsers use the least memory. To help you identify the browsers that will use the least amount of RAM in 2022, we have compiled a list of the usual suspects.

What browsers utilise the least amount of memory?

The browsers that utilise the least amount of RAM will now be discussed, starting from the most to the least.

7- Safari

Now, for many individuals, it may come as a shock to see Safari ranked this low. Indeed, there are arguments to be made for why Safari might outperform every other choice on this list. However, it is not the fact that it works poorly but rather how it performs that accounts for why it ranks so low on the list of today.

The only places you can use Safari are on Apple products, including the iPad, iPhone, and various MAC OS operating systems. Consequently, even if the performance of Safari, an Apple-developed browser, is exceptionally well synchronised with their devices as part of the well-known Apple ecosystem, you will only enjoy this top-tier performance if you are part of this environment.This might not be a big deal in North America and Europe, where pricey Apple hardware is virtually always in users’ hands, but as soon as you leave these places, you are undoubtedly going to see a sizable portion of alternative OS options at work that can’t even run Safari to begin with. Safari’s constricted features are what cost it the bottom rank on this list. Nevertheless, as was already noted, the performance is as fluid as it can be.

6- Google Chrome

Google Chrome, the most popular browser in the world, comes up next, but not because of its fame. If you have a habit of keeping a lot of tabs open when using Chrome, it might drastically impair the performance of your computer.

Our testing show that keeping 10 tabs open will cost your RAM slightly about 1000MB. As the number of tabs increases, Chrome’s memory usage soars to unimaginable heights, requiring around 1.9GB of your computer’s RAM for 20 tabs. Chrome uses a lot of CPU resources, which increases the likelihood that it will slow down your workflow.

It may even prevent you from finishing what you are currently working on by crashing your OS. Chrome offers a lot more functionality and extensions than other browsers, despite all of its drawbacks. Additionally, it has a sharp aesthetic that almost makes up for any hidden issues. You may silently install Google Chrome, which is another amazing feature.In essence, if you don’t have the time to go through the installation process, you can silently instal Google Chrome. For instance, you don’t have to disturb your coworkers’ work if you need to silently instal Google Chrome on 10 computers at work using the company network.

5- Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla’s well-liked and privacy-conscious browser, Firefox, is ranked fifth. And no, despite its reputation for being efficient, the browser may consume almost as much RAM as Chrome.

Firefox used roughly 960MBs of memory when tested with 10 tabs open, which is just little less than Chrome. At 20 tabs, the figure increased to 1.6GB, which is still quite a bit even though it is 300MBs lighter. Although few users keep 40 tabs open at once, we performed tests to determine how much RAM it would require. The explanation is that using 40 tabs in Firefox will eat up 3GB of memory, which will reduce a computer’s overall performance.

Given its strict tracker and cookie policies, Firefox has the advantage of being the most privacy-friendly among popular browsers. However, it is not the least RAM-hungry browser, so you must consider your options.

4- Chromium

Are you the kind of person who would tolerate Chrome’s high hardware utilisation because you are so ingrained in the Google world and ecosystem? Or perhaps you tolerate Chrome’s heavy resource utilisation because you like the way it works and looks. Whatever the situation, it’s obvious that Chrome might improve in a number of different ways with some assistance. here comes Chrome. Chrome and many other browsers are built using the open-source Chromium base code.

Chromium prioritises privacy and does not employ the proprietary coding that Chrome does. Overall, Chromium is more of a “wildcard” choice for developers who can use it to personalise and shape the software to a browser that they can appreciate. If Chrome’s user interface (UI) is what kept you using it, you can utilise Chromium to keep using the application while giving yourself limitless personalization and customization options at the developer level.

But keep in mind that because Chrome is the optimised version of Chromium, it performs surprisingly better than Chromium. But Chromium’s other features are sufficient to overcome this.

3- Brave 

On the blog, meet Brave, a browser with a focus on privacy. It’s actually one of the best methods for maintaining control over your data without spending the time to learn Linux at the level of a hacker

This browser even includes a feature that rewards you with tokens for seeing advertisements. For all of these and many more reasons, Brave is unquestionably worthwhile to try, but how resource-efficient is it in reality?

When it was in its previous release versions, Brave used a lot of RAM, almost as much as Chrome. By 2022, Brave will use far less memory than Chrome thanks to ongoing memory management improvements.

If you can’t pick between Brave and Firefox because of their similar RAM utilisation, you’ll need to find another method.

2- Opera

Recall Opera? It was once a serious contender, and in many ways, it still is. Due to its low system requirements, Opera is a superb browser for PCs with modest specifications or that are older. Even if your machine isn’t exactly cutting edge, its webpage loading times are within reasonable bounds. See how it performed on our testing.

Opera utilised 899 MBs of RAM with 10 open tabs, which is slightly less than the other browsers. However, given that Opera is designed to be a lightweight browser that sacrifices functionality and usability for performance, we did anticipate it to perform significantly better. When we tested Opera with 20 active tabs, it used 1.5GBs of memory, which is just marginally better than Firefox.

1- Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge is the surprise leader on our list of the browsers that consume the least RAM. With a Chromium engine, Edge is faring better than Internet Explorer did, which was notorious for its numerous faults and exploits. With only 3.39% of the browser market share, Microsoft Edge isn’t exactly the most widely used browser, but it has shown to be lot better than its reputation would have you believe.

According to the findings of our tests, Edge uses far less memory than the other browsers on our list, taking up only 790MBs with 10 tabs open. Edge’s excellent space efficiency results in only 1.2GBs of RAM being used when 20 tabs are open at once.

Edge employs the same Chromium engine as Chrome, but it uses memory considerably more effectively, making it the best browser for RAM usage. The best browser may not always be the one that uses the least memory, though. When assessing a browser’s overall effectiveness, there are other more aspects to consider.

2022 comparison of RAM use by browsers (What browser uses the least RAM)

We have highlighted the top 5 browsers in the globe so far that stand out for using little RAM (of course they hold other beneficial features as well). The comparison we made of the many characteristics of the aforementioned browsers is what we want to call your attention to right now.

Our primary focus, as it was in this post, was how much RAM each browser used. We ranked the following list of these 5 browsers in order of least RAM usage to maximum RAM usage.

BROWSERRAM USAGECURRENT LAYOUT ENGINESECURITY AND PRIVACYUTILITYPORTABILITYUSER FRIENDLINESS
Microsoft Edge790 MBs with 10 tabBlink4/54/54/54/5
Opera899 MBs with 10 tabsBlink4/54/54/55/5
Brave920 MBsChromium5/55/55/54/5
Mozilla
Firefox
960 MBs with 10 tabGecko5/54/55/53/5
Google Chrome1000 MBs with 10 tabsChromium3/55/55/54/5

A brief one-on-one comparison of the RAM utilisation of the most common browsers is also worthwhile in addition to this. We will contrast Chrome, which is infamous for consuming a lot of RAM, with the other two most often used options, Edge and Firefox.

Edge vs Chrome RAM Usage Comparison

With 10, 20, and 60 tabs open, we’ll perform the test on each browser to determine which one consumes the least memory. We can easily check how each browser utilises RAM as well as how they scale as the number of open tabs rises thanks to this. To see if Chrome still eats up RAM as it is known to do, we first ran the test on Chrome.

Chrome used 950 MB of RAM when it had 10 open tabs, 1.8 GB when it had 20 open tabs, and ultimately reached its max of 3.7 GB when it had 60 active tabs. Without a question, Chrome has advanced from earlier versions of the browser. But it still packs a decent punch.

Then we arrived at Edge. Edge measured 870 MB of RAM consumption while it had 10 tabs open, which increased to 1.4 GB at 20 tabs and then 2.9 GB at 60 tabs. Edge is not just superior in every single instance, but it also improves over time in terms of scalability as you add more tabs. Edge outperforms Chrome in terms of RAM usage with 69 tabs, which is a significant 800 MB advantage.

Comparison of RAM usage between Firefox and Chrome

We will now repeat the test, but instead of using Chrome versus Edge this time, Firefox will be used instead. Even with the most recent changes Google implemented to make Chrome less RAM demanding, it still lost the most recent match fairly heavily to Edge.

Already, Firefox is renowned for its slick operation. Let’s compare its RAM use to that of Chrome. Chrome used 950 MB of RAM initially, scaling to 1.8 GB with 20 open tabs, and finally peaking at about 3.7 GB at 60 open tabs, as was already noted. Thus, Firefox’s performance will be evaluated in relation to this criteria.

Firefox got off to an unexpectedly rocky start in the test. With 10 active tabs, it used 990 MB of RAM, which is worse than Chrome. Then, by running 20 open tabs at 1.6 GB of RAM, it was able to function better. Finally, it went back to losing by using a staggering 3.9 GB of RAM with 60 tabs. This suggests, I suppose, that Firefox is the superior browser, but only if you typically have 15 to 20 tabs active. But it performs worse than Chrome at the extremes of 1 to 5 tabs and 50 to 60 tabs.

Scraping the Barrel: Best Browser for a Low-End PC?

K-Meleon

By any other standard, K-Meleon is still among the top choices for users of low-end PCs looking for the finest browser. In contrast to other, heavier browsers, the interface doesn’t appear dated, and its amazing performance is undoubtedly the icing on the cake. K-Meleon is open-source and free. The performance is as light as possible on your hardware thanks to the Gecko layout engine, with each new tab average at just 20 MB, which is exceptionally little. It requires Windows XP-SP3 or a later version to run, plus there is also a sizable online community!

UR Browser

Another great browser for users of older PCs is UR Browser. Surprisingly, it has a macOS version as well, unlike many other light browsers available. In order to enhance performance effectiveness for the user, features like trackers, cookies, targeted adverts, etc. are completely removed. Your privacy is also a top priority for UR Browser. It has a built-in privacy mode picker that lets you pick from the three available privacy settings. If you choose their basic privacy settings, you can view all the advertisements in the world, but they also offer medium privacy and “Ninja” modes that, respectively, will block ads and make you absolutely untraceable.

Midori

Recall how we mentioned that the UR browser is also compatible with macOS? In any case, Midori elevates this game to a whole new level and makes it available for download on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and is now working on an iOS version. In many ways, Midori and UR browser are comparable. It will have certain privacy and security features. Finally, Midori offers outstanding user support, which is frequently lacking in other lightweight browsers. Midori will substantially simplify life for users of low-end PCs because it uses RAM and CPU similarly to K-Meleon.

SeaMonkey

SeaMonkey by itself is not a browser. Instead, it is a collection of applications that includes a web browser, and a lightweight one at that. The renowned Firefox uses the same Mozilla base code as this programme. But unlike Firefox, it eliminates a lot of cumbersome add-ons and employs optimization to make the most of the browser’s capacity to function on low-end PCs. It can operate on computers with the older Pentium processors. I only require a bare minimum of 1GB of total RAM for it to function flawlessly. SeaMonkey features a restore session feature as well because low-end PCs crash frequently. A superb browser all around.

Lynx

Lynx, which debuted in 1992 and will still be supported until 2022, is the oldest browser in existence. Its distinctiveness is not limited to this. You won’t be able to see any graphics on Lynx since it employs a text-based approach rather than a graphical user interface (GUI) to explore the web. Lynx is the most lightweight browser on the list right now thanks to its terminal-oriented design, but it’s also the most difficult for the typical user to operate. It is still a fantastic choice for programmers and back-end developers that want to get the most of their resource allocation.

What can you do if a resource consumer browser is required?

Then what? Stop worrying about how much RAM your browser uses and just go virtual with our cost-effective Windows 10 VPS plans as a method to increase the productivity of your PC. You can just use the cutting-edge, high-spec PCs that we supply with all of our VPS services rather from being constrained to your own computer system(s).

You can run as many programmes and tabs as you like without having to worry about your system crashing or slowing down. Choose one of our many VPS plans, and you won’t ever have to worry about RAM space again, whether you run a business with a lot of programmers and coders or are a gamer looking for a better gaming experience.

Conclusion

Is the outcome of our test evidence that Edge should be your default browser, as we discussed which browsers use the least memory? in no way. Although having a lightweight browser is excellent, it is not the only consideration. You must carefully weigh the use of memory in relation to a variety of other considerations, including user usability, extensibility, CPU utilisation, loading time, and a whole host of others.

A decent browser should keep you secure against viruses and leaks, guard you against invasive cookies and trackers, and of course load your preferred websites quickly. Edge utilises the least amount of RAM of any browser, although it might perform worse in some other areas. You might need to consider “Which browser meets your needs” in addition to “Which browser consumes the least RAM”.

FAQ

In 2022, which browser should I use?

A universal browser does not exist. Due of their various functionality, different browsers can be used for various purposes. Knowing the features of each browser and taking into account your unique demands will help you choose the one that is best for you.

Which browser makes the least usage of RAM?

This past year saw the entry of new rivals, and by 2022 there will be more contenders than ever for the title of most resource-efficient browser. Edge, however, continues to defy expectations by becoming the least resource-hungry, according to the statistics.

Which uses more CPU: Chrome or Firefox?

Both browsers use a lot of memory, although Chrome uses less RAM than Firefox overall. What about CPU utilisation, though? Our studies show that Chrome retains its position as the most resource-intensive browser, even in terms of CPU usage. Therefore, if you don’t want to overtax your CPU, Firefox is a better option.

Why does Google Chrome require so much RAM?

because of the browser extensions and plugins you’ve undoubtedly added. Chrome will use more RAM the more plugins and addons you have installed.

How can I lower the RAM utilisation of my browser?

  • Trim down the tabs
  • Remove all unnecessary plugins and extensions
  • Disable the Site Isolation function.
  • Set the prediction service to “on”
  • periodically run a virus scan

Can Mozilla compete with Chrome?

Both Mozilla and Chrome are well-known for being very useful and functional browsers (by experts). There are some differences between them, nevertheless, that specifically target their application in various scenarios. For instance, Mozilla can work better for you if all you’re after is lower RAM use.

In 2022, what would a super-fast browser be?

A browser can be deemed “rapid” in a variety of ways, such as how quickly it loads a page or how much RAM it uses when it loads the browser itself. Chrome clearly leads the pack in terms of page load speed by a significant margin. But the situation is completely reversed. Chrome is in last place when it comes to memory management and loading the browser itself, with Edge taking the top spot. You can always choose between Firefox and Brave if you’re looking for balance.

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