Comparison of browser engines

This article compares browser engines.

Some of these engines have shared origins. For example, the WebKit engine was created by forking the KHTML engine in 2001.[1] Then, in 2013, a modified version of WebKit was officially forked as the Blink engine.[2]

General information

Engine Status Creators License Used in
WebKit Stable Apple, initially forked from KHTML GNU LGPL, BSD-style Safari browser, GNOME Web, Konqueror, Orion and all browsers for iOS[3]
Blink Stable Google, initially forked from WebKit GNU LGPL, BSD-style All Chromium-based browsers
Gecko Stable Mozilla Mozilla Public Firefox browser and its forks; SeaMonkey browser, Thunderbird email client
Goanna Stable M. C. Straver,[4] initially forked from Gecko Mozilla Public Pale Moon, Basilisk, K-Meleon browsers
NetSurf Stable NetSurf developers[5] GNU GPLv2 NetSurf browser
Servo Experimental[6][7] Linux Foundation Mozilla Public Experimental browsers[8][9]
LibWeb Experimental; in pre-alpha[10] Ladybird Browser Initiative[11] 2-clause BSD Ladybird browser[12]
KHTML[13] Discontinued KDE GNU LGPL Formerly in the Konqueror browser[14]
Tkhtml Discontinued Liem Bahneman[15] BSD Formerly in Html Viewer 3 browser
Trident Stable Microsoft Proprietary Internet Explorer browser; Microsoft Edge IE mode
Flow[16] Experimental; in beta[16] Ekioh[17] Proprietary Flow browser[18]
EdgeHTML Discontinued Microsoft Proprietary Some UWP apps;[19] formerly Microsoft Edge browser[20]
Presto Discontinued Opera Proprietary Opera Mini browser in Extreme/Mini mode, where contents arrive pre-rendered using this engine server-side[21]
NetFront Discontinued Access Co., Ltd. Proprietary Formerly in the NetFront browser, Palm Blazer 3 and up, the Dreamcast web browser, the PSP web browser, and PS3 web browser versions prior to system software 4.10.
Tasman Discontinued Microsoft Proprietary Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition
Mariner Discontinued Netscape Communications Proprietary Netscape Communicator 5.0

Support

These tables summarize what stable engines support.

Operating systems

The operating systems that engines can run on without emulation.

Engine Windows macOS Linux BSD Haiku Android iOS[3]
WebKit Yes[note 1] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Blink Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[note 2] Yes No
Gecko Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Goanna Yes Yes[22] Yes Yes No No[23] No
NetSurf[24] Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No
Trident Yes No No No No No No

Image formats

Engine JPEG JPEG 2000 JPEG XL JPEG XL HDR JPEG ISO HDR JPEG Adobe HDR GIF BMP PNG APNG SVG WebP AVIF AVIF HDR HEIC HEIC HDR
WebKit Yes Yes Yes No[25][26] No [25][26] No [25][26] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No [25]
Blink Yes No No[27][28] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Gecko Yes No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
Goanna Yes No Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No
NetSurf[29] Yes No Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No No
Trident Yes No No[30] No ? ? Yes Yes Yes No Partial No No[31] No No[32] No

Media formats

Engine VP9 AV1 HEVC H264 Opus FLAC
WebKit Yes Yes Yes Yes ? Yes
Blink Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Gecko Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Goanna Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
NetSurf No No No ? No ?
Trident No[33] No[34] Partial[33] Yes[33] No[35] No[36]

Typography

Engine TTF OTF WOFF WOFF2 @font-face CSS rule Ligatures (font-variant-ligatures CSS property)
WebKit Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Blink Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Gecko Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Goanna Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
NetSurf ? ? No No Partial[37] No
Trident Partial[38] Partial[38] Yes[39] No[40] Yes[41] No[42]

Other items

Engine Web Components WebGL WebGPU[43] XHTML
WebKit Partial[44] Yes No Yes
Blink Yes Yes Yes Yes
Gecko Yes Yes No Yes
Goanna Yes[45] Yes No Yes
NetSurf No No No ?
Trident No[44] Yes[46] No[47] Yes[48]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Must be built from source code.
  2. ^ Only available via QtWebEngine.

References

  1. ^ Paul Festa (14 January 2003). "Apple snub stings Mozilla". CNET Networks. Archived from the original on 25 October 2012. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  2. ^ Bright, Peter (3 April 2013). "Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine". Ars Technica. Conde Nast. Retrieved 9 March 2017.
  3. ^ a b "Open-sourcing Chrome on iOS!". 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2021. Due to constraints of the iOS platform, all browsers must be built on top of the WebKit rendering engine.
  4. ^ M. C. Straver. "About Moonchild Productions". Archived from the original on 13 March 2017. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  5. ^ "NetSurf Developer page". Netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  6. ^ Developers, The Servo Project. "Two months in Servo: CSS nesting, Shadow DOM, Clipboard API, and more! - Servo aims to empower developers with a lightweight, high-performance alternative for embedding web technologies in applications". Servo. Retrieved 10 May 2025.
  7. ^ "Servo engines written in Rust deliver memory safety and multithreading". Mozilla Research. Archived from the original on 11 June 2020. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  8. ^ "A new browser for Magic Leap". 3 December 2018. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  9. ^ "Firefox Reality for HoloLens 2". 21 May 2020. Retrieved 17 July 2020.
  10. ^ "Breadcrumbs/README.MD". 25 November 2024. Archived from the original on 30 March 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  11. ^ Kling, Andreas (1 July 2024). "Announcing the Ladybird Browser Initiative". ladybird.org.
  12. ^ Andreas Kling (September 2022). "Ladybird: A new cross-platform browser project". Please note that we're still early in development, and many web platform features are missing or broken. It's going to take a long time before Ladybird is ready for day-to-day browsing.
  13. ^ "KHTML repository". GitHub. Retrieved 5 May 2023. Removed for KF6, the 'kf5' branch contains the last maintained state.
  14. ^ "Port Konqueror away from KHTML". phabricator.kde.org. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  15. ^ Mintert, Stefan (1995). "Weberknechte - WWW Dokumente komfortabel erstellen". iX (in German) (8). Heinz Heise.
  16. ^ a b "Flow Preview Builds". Ekioh. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  17. ^ "About Ekioh". Ekioh.
  18. ^ "Flow Browser". Ekioh.
  19. ^ Mendelevich, Alan (14 May 2021). "You Think You Can Forget About the "Legacy" Microsoft Edge? Not So Fast!".
  20. ^ Mackie, Kurt (10 December 2018). "Microsoft Edge Browser To Get New Rendering Engine but EdgeHTML Continues". Redmond Mag. Retrieved 21 December 2019.
  21. ^ "Opera Browsers, Modes & Engines". dev.opera.com. 2 June 2015. Archived from the original on 14 June 2015.
  22. ^ "#1829 Restore Mac OS X code and buildability". 31 March 2022. Archived from the original on 6 May 2022.
  23. ^ "Pale Moon for Android is dead". forum.palemoon.org. April 2019. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  24. ^ "NetSurf Downloads". NetSurf. 2009. Retrieved 17 April 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  25. ^ a b c d "Bug 288705: [HDR] Enable SupportHDRDisplay feature by default". Webkit Team. 28 February 2025. Retrieved 21 March 2025.
  26. ^ a b c "Bug 290940: Gain mapped images do not show HDR contents". Webkit Team. 2 April 2025. Retrieved 10 April 2025.
  27. ^ "Google kills forthcoming JPEG XL image format in Chromium". The Register. 31 October 2022. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  28. ^ Purdy, Kevin (17 April 2023). "FSF: Chrome's JPEG XL killing shows how the web works under browser hegemony". Ars Technica. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  29. ^ "NetSurf". NetSurf. 28 December 2023. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  30. ^ "JPEG XL image format". Can I use... Archived from the original on 1 April 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  31. ^ "AVIF image format". Can I use... Archived from the original on 5 April 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  32. ^ "HEIF/HEIC image format". Can I use... Archived from the original on 8 April 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  33. ^ a b c "Browser Video: Codecs, Formats & Hardware Acceleration". Helge Klein. 4 December 2017. Archived from the original on 25 March 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  34. ^ "AV1 video format". Can I use... Archived from the original on 4 April 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  35. ^ "Opus audio format". Can I use... Archived from the original on 9 April 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  36. ^ "FLAC audio format". Can I use... Archived from the original on 30 March 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  37. ^ "NetSurf 2.9". Change Log. NetSurf. Retrieved 17 April 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  38. ^ a b "TTF/OTF - TrueType and OpenType font support". Can I use... Archived from the original on 17 January 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  39. ^ "WOFF - Web Open Font Format". Can I use... Archived from the original on 9 February 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  40. ^ "WOFF 2.0 - Web Open Font Format". Can I use... Archived from the original on 30 January 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  41. ^ "@font-face Web fonts". Can I use... Archived from the original on 21 March 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  42. ^ "CSS property: font-variant-ligatures". Can I use... Archived from the original on 28 December 2024. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  43. ^ "WebGPU Implementation Status". GitHub. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  44. ^ a b "Custom Elements (V1)". Can I use... Archived from the original on 2 March 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  45. ^ "v32.1.0 (2023-03-21)". Release notes for version 33 releases. Pale Moon. 21 March 2023. Archived from the original on 1 April 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  46. ^ "WebGL - 3D Canvas graphics". Can I use... Archived from the original on 5 July 2023. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  47. ^ "WebGPU". Can I use... Archived from the original on 5 April 2025. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
  48. ^ "XHTML served as application/xhtml+xml". Can I use... Archived from the original on 12 December 2024. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
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