Chrome vs Firefox vs Microsoft Edge vs Brave – the FASTEST Web Browser in 2020 is…

A browser is a browser is a browser right? I mean all a web browser does is simply open up a web page so we can read a blog post or watch a movie – they are just the “container”. So how much of a difference can using one web browser be versus another web browser? How much of a difference does it actually make on our internet speed? Is there such a thing as the fastest web browser?

I set to find out.

I tested Chrome versus Firefox vs Microsoft Edge vs Brave and the results we pretty interesting.

Note: I did NOT test the new Microsoft Edge Based on Chromium as I did not have it at the time of testing.

How the fastest web browsers were tested

The concept of this test is not to get all techie and customize each browser in a “lab situation”. The test is to simulate a real-life situation where a regular person opens the browser. That is what you would do. You type a URL and go to a website with a browser. The test was to see if there is a noticeable difference in web browser speed when going to the same website.

The way I ran these tests was using my software that measured from the moment the URL was typed in and the go button was clicked. The timer stopped the moment the website loaded. While the software I used showed me those points, I will say that you need to allow for some split-second human error.

Is there a fastest web browser after all?

I ran three quickest web browser tests that simulate the type of websites that we encounter. The first test was TheTechieGuy.com which is your typical website. It had scripts, ads, and articles. The second was the Wikipedia text-only website. The final test was done on the Netflix movie streaming site that automatically logs you in.

I ran these tests on my wired network and no other device was connected to the network. However, what I couldn’t control was anything outside my network. So these tests aren’t 100% perfect as the web services I connect to could be busier with one browser than when I test another browser a few minutes later.

I did run the command IPCOFIG / FLUSHDNS which gets rid of any cached DNS entries on the computer.  This was done before each browser test. Therefore they all started from the same point of having to look up the DNS.

I also cleared the cache files from each browser so there was no advantage by me visiting that website previously and having images already stored on my computer which makes the website load faster.

Here is how Chrome versus Firefox vs Microsoft Edge vs Brave fared in the fastest web browser speed battle:

So in summary:

I won’t spoil the test or the results as they are shown in the video. My question is: knowing what you know now, will you change your browser?