Comparison of lightweight web browsers

A lightweight web browser is a web browser that sacrifices some of the features of a mainstream web browser in order to reduce the consumption of system resources, and especially to minimize the memory footprint.[1][2][3]

The tables below compare 17 lightweight web browsers. Several of them use a common layout engine, but each has a unique combination of features and a potential niche. The minimal user interface in surf, for example, does not have tabs,[4] whereas xombrero can be driven with vi-like keyboard commands.[5]

Four of the browsers compared—Lynx, w3m, Links, and ELinks—are designed for text mode, and can function in a terminal emulator. Links 2 has both a text-based user interface and a graphical user interface. w3m is, in addition to being a web browser, also a terminal pager.[6]

Overview

Browser Developers Development status Engine Programming languages Software license Latest stable release
Arora Benjamin C. Meyer et al.[7] Discontinued QtWebKit[8] C++ GPL 0.11.0[9] (27 September 2010 (2010-09-27)) [±]
Dillo Jorge Arellano Cid et al. Active Dillo C, C++ GPLv3 3.0.5[10] (30 June 2015 (2015-06-30)) [±]
ELinks Petr Baudiš, Jonas Fonseca, et al. Active Links C, C++ GPLv2 0.11.7[11] (22 August 2009 (2009-08-22)) [±]
K-Meleon Christophe Thibault et al. Active Gecko C++ GPL 75.1 (September 19, 2015 (2015-09-19)[12]) [±]
Links Mikuláš Patočka, Twibright Labs, et al. Active Links C GPLv2+ 2.12[13] (20 September 2015 (2015-09-20)) [±]
Lynx Lou Montulli, Thomas Dickey, et al. Active libwww derivative C (ISO C) GPLv2 2.8.8[14] (9 March 2014 (2014-03-09)) [±]
Midori Christian Dywan et al. Active WebKitGTK+ Vala, C LGPL v2.1+ 0.5.11[15] (30 August 2015 (2015-08-30)) [±]
NetSurf John-Mark Bell, Michael Drake, et al.[16] Active NetSurf C (ANSI C) GPLv2 3.5[17] (14 April 2016 (2016-04-14)) [±]
Pale Moon M.C. Straver Active Goanna C, C++ MPL 26.2.1 (April 8, 2016 (2016-04-08)[18]) [±]
QtWeb LogicWare; LSoft Technologies[19] Unmaintained QtWebKit C++ GPL 3.8.5[20] (9 September 2013 (2013-09-09)) [±]
QupZilla David Rosca Active QtWebKit C++ GPLv3 2.0 (March 30, 2016 (2016-03-30)[21]) [±]
rekonq Andrea Diamantini et al. Active QtWebKit[8] C++ GPLv3 2.4.2[22][23] (12 January 2014 (2014-01-12)) [±]
surf Christoph Lohmann et al. Active WebKitGTK+ C MIT License 0.7 (19 December 2015 (2015-12-19)[24]) [±]
uzbl Dieter Plaetinck, et al. Active WebKitGTK+ C, Python GPLv3 0.9 (February 28, 2016 (2016-02-28)[25]) [±]
w3m Akinori Ito et al. Unmaintained w3m C MIT License 0.5.3[26] (15 January 2011 (2011-01-15)) [±]
WebPositive Andrea Anzani, Ryan Leavengood, et al. Active HaikuWebkit C++ MIT License 1.1-alpha (15 November 2013 (2013-11-15)) [±]
xombrero Marco Peerboom et al. Active WebKitGTK+ C, JavaScript ISC license 1.6.3[27] (11 July 2013 (2013-07-11)) [±]

Operating system support

Browser BSD Haiku Linux OpenIndiana OS X OS/2 QNX RISC OS Windows Android
Arora Yes Yes Yes Yes[28] Yes Yes No No Yes ?
Dillo Yes No Yes Yes[29] Yes No No Yes[29] Cygwin[29][30] ?
ELinks Yes[31] ? Yes[31] Yes[31] Yes[31] Yes[31] No[31] Dropped[31] ? ?
K-Meleon No No No No No No No No Yes ?
Links Unofficial No Yes ? Unofficial Yes No No Yes ?
Lynx Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[32][33] Yes ?
Midori Yes No Yes Unofficial[lower-roman 1] No No No No Yes ?
NetSurf Yes[34] Yes[lower-roman 2] Yes[34] Yes[34] Yes[34] No ? Yes[36] No ?
Pale Moon Unofficial[37] No Yes No Unofficial No No No Yes Yes
QtWeb Yes Unofficial[38] Yes Unofficial[lower-roman 3] Yes No No No Yes ?
QupZilla Yes[39] Yes[39] Yes[39] No Yes[39] Yes[39] No No Yes[39] ?
rekonq Yes No Yes Unofficial[lower-roman 3] No No No No Inactive[lower-roman 4] ?
surf Yes No Yes ? ? ? ? No No ?
w3m Unofficial Unofficial Unofficial Unofficial Unofficial Inactive No No Cygwin ?
WebPositive No Yes No No No No No No No ?
xombrero Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes ?
Notes
  1. ↑ Must be built from source code with a Vala compiler.[28]
  2. ↑ A binary for NetSurf v2.0 for Haiku is available. For v2.1 and higher, one must build it from source.[35]
  3. 1 2 Must be built from source code; requires a compatible version of Qt.
  4. ↑ rekonq v1.1 for Windows was published in September 2012. As of June 2014, it is the only published version for Windows.[40]

Features

Test scores reflect the version of the browser engine in use. Generally, a lower score indicates an older version of the browser engine.

Image formats Advanced Test scores Plug-in APIs
Browser GIF, JPEG, PNG WebP JavaScript Frames Acid3 HTML5test Netscape Pepper
Arora Yes No Yes Yes 100/100[lower-roman 1] 359/550[41] No[lower-roman 2] No
Dillo Yes No No Partial N/A[lower-roman 3] N/A[lower-roman 3] No No
ELinks No No Partial[lower-roman 4] Partial N/A[lower-roman 3] N/A[lower-roman 3] No No
K-Meleon Yes No Yes Yes 100/100[lower-roman 1] 416/555[43] Partial[44] No
Links Yes[lower-roman 5] No Partial Partial N/A[lower-roman 3] N/A[lower-roman 3] No No
Lynx No No No Partial N/A[lower-roman 3] N/A[lower-roman 3] No No
Midori Yes Yes[lower-roman 6] Yes Yes 100/100 325/555[46] Yes Yes
NetSurf Yes[47] Yes Yes Yes N/A[lower-roman 3] N/A[lower-roman 3] No[48] No
Pale Moon Yes Yes Yes Yes 95/100 408/555[49] Yes No
QtWeb Yes No Yes Yes 100/100[lower-roman 1][lower-roman 7] 234/550[50] No[lower-roman 2] No
QupZilla Yes No Yes Yes 100/100[lower-roman 1] 385/550[51] Partial No
rekonq Yes No Yes Yes 100/100[lower-roman 1] 385/555[52] No[lower-roman 2] Partial[53]
surf Yes Yes[lower-roman 6] Yes Yes 100/100[lower-roman 1] 385/500[54] Yes ?
w3m Yes[55] No Partial Yes N/A[lower-roman 3] N/A[lower-roman 3] No No
WebPositive Yes No Yes Yes 96/100[lower-roman 1] 253/500[56] No No
xombrero Yes Yes[lower-roman 6] Yes Yes 100/100 385/500[57] Yes ?
Notes
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Some tests take too much time to complete.
  2. 1 2 3 NPAPI is ported to QtWebKit, but is not implemented in this browser.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 The test requires JavaScript, which is not sufficiently supported by this browser.
  4. ↑ ELinks implements Mozilla's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine.[42]
  5. ↑ Only Links 2 supports graphics.
  6. 1 2 3 WebP is supported via the WebKitGTK+ browser engine.[45]
  7. ↑ The final state does not match the reference rendering.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Arora, Himanshu (6 November 2013). "5 lesser-known browsers: Free, lightweight and low-maintenance". Computerworld. International Data Group. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
  2. ↑ Klimkiewicz, Kamil (18 January 2003). "Lightweight Web Browsers". Freecode. Dice Holdings. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
  3. ↑ Arimbra, Krishnan (16 July 2013). "Memory usage of the browsers – Lightest browser". Geekiest.Net. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
  4. ↑ "surf". Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  5. ↑ Peereboom, Marco; Hill, David; et al. (1 March 2012). "xombrero wiki § Quick-Start Tutorial". Conformal Systems. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  6. ↑ Ito, Akinori. "w3m". w3m.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  7. ↑ Meyer, Benjamin (2 October 2009). "Arora 0.10.0!". Arora Development. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  8. 1 2 Poulain, Benjamin; et al. (10 May 2010). "Applications Using QtWebKit". Qt Wiki. Qt Project Hosting. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  9. ↑ Meyer, Benjamin (27 September 2010). "Arora 0.11.0!". Arora Development. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  10. ↑ Arellano Cid, Jorge (2015). "ChangeLog". www.dillo.org. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
  11. ↑ "ELinks - Full-Featured Text WWW Browser". elinks.or.cz. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  12. ↑ "News". kmeleon.sourceforge.net. September 19, 2015. Retrieved October 3, 2015.
  13. ↑ "ChangeLog". links.twibright.com. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  14. ↑ Dickey, Thomas E. (14 February 2014). "Stable release". lynx.isc.org. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  15. ↑ "Changelog". www.twotoasts.de. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
  16. ↑ "The NetSurf Developers". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
  17. ↑ "News". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 15 Apr 2016.
  18. ↑ "Pale Moon Release Notes". Pale Moon. 2016-04-08. Retrieved 2016-04-08.
  19. ↑ "About QtWeb". QtWeb.NET. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  20. ↑ "Qt Web Browser". QtWeb.NET. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  21. ↑ Rosca, David (30 March 2016). "QupZilla 2.0.0 released with QtWebEngine!". QupZilla Blog.
  22. ↑ "rekonq: Files". SourceForge. 12 January 2014. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  23. ↑ Diamantini, Andrea (12 January 2014). "rekonq 2.4.2". adjam.weblog(). Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  24. ↑ "Index of /surf/". suckless.org. 19 December 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  25. ↑ "The uzbl web interface tools".
  26. ↑ "w3m: Files". SourceForge. 15 January 2011. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  27. ↑ "xombrero: Files". SourceForge. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  28. 1 2 "Spec Files Extra Repository". OpenIndiana Wiki. 2011. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  29. 1 2 3 "Dillo Web Browser Compatibility". Dillo.org. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
  30. ↑ Vibber, Kelson (28 April 2005). "Installing Dillo on Cygwin". Hyperborea. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
  31. ↑ "Nettle". nettle.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
  32. ↑ "New Telnet Client and Web Browser for RISC OS". My RISC OS. 2 September 2001. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
  33. 1 2 3 4 "GTK NetSurf Downloads". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  34. ↑ "Haiku and BeOS NetSurf Downloads". netsurf-browser.org. 24 April 2009. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  35. ↑ "RISC OS NetSurf Downloads". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
  36. ↑ "Pale Moon for FreeBSD". Pale Moon Forums. 2014. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
  37. ↑ "QtWeb - Web Browser". Haikuware. 31 May 2013. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  38. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Qupzilla - Lightweight multiplatform browser: Download". Qupzilla.com. Retrieved 28 August 2014.
  39. ↑ Papp, Laszlo (24 September 2012). "Randa: Rekonq installer for Windows". KDE (Laszlo Papp's blog). Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  40. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.21 (KHTML, like Gecko) Arora/0.11.0 Safari/537.21". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
  41. ↑ Inge Bolso, Erik (8 March 2005). "2005 Text Mode Browser Roundup". Linux Journal. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  42. ↑ https://html5test.com/s/553a452871cce107.html
  43. ↑ "ThirdPartyPlugins". kmeleonbrowser.org. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  44. ↑ Jáquez, Víctor (31 December 2013). "Boosting WebKitGTK+ compilation for armhf with icecream". Herostratus’ legacy. Igalia. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
  45. ↑ Midori_(web_browser)#HTML5_score
  46. ↑ Auza, Jun (27 June 2009). "5 Free and Open Source Web Browsers That You May Have Never Heard Of". TechSource. Retrieved 26 June 2014.
  47. ↑ "0001896: NPAPI plugin support". NetSurf Bug Report System. 22 October 2010. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  48. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:25.8) Gecko/20151123 Firefox/31.9 PaleMoon/25.8.1". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 18 December 2015.
  49. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux; en-GB) AppleWebKit/534.34 (KHTML, like Gecko) QtWeb Internet Browser/3.8.5 http://www.QtWeb.net". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 22 July 2014. External link in |title= (help)
  50. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.21 (KHTML, like Gecko) QupZilla/1.6.0 Safari/537.21". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
  51. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.21 (KHTML, like Gecko) rekonq/2.4.2 Safari/537.21". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
  52. ↑ Howell, Dean (22 May 2013). "ReKonq Gaining Chrome Extension Support, Still Sponsored By Blue Systems". The Powerbase. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  53. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Unix; en-US) AppleWebKit/537.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/24.0.1295.0 Safari/537.15 Surf/0.6". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  54. ↑ Hoffman, Chris (23 January 2012). "How to Browse From the Linux Terminal With W3M". How-To Geek. How-To Geek, LLC. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  55. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; U; Haiku x86; en-US) AppleWebKit/536.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Haiku/R1 WebPositive/1.1 Safari/536.10". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  56. ↑ "HTML5test results for: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/538.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/538.15 Version/6.0". HTML5test.com. Retrieved 28 July 2014.

Further reading


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