Firefox vs. Chrome: Which Performs Better on a Linux Laptop? (phoronix.com)
(Saturday April 11, 2026 @11:34AM (EditorDavid)
from the battling-browsers dept.)
- Reference: 0181572072
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/11/0519246/firefox-vs-chrome-which-performs-better-on-a-linux-laptop
- Source link: https://www.phoronix.com/review/firefox-chrome-2026
Phoronix [1]staged "a showdown" between Firefox and Chrome , testing them both on an Intel Panther Lake laptop running Ubuntu 26.04.
> JetStream 3.0 was announced at the end of March as the latest major web browser benchmark. This updated version of JetStream is focused on intensive portions of modern JavaScript and WebAssembly web applications... Google Chrome 147 came in at 1.47x the performance of Mozilla Firefox 149. A very strong showing for Google's web browser and to not much surprise Google engineers have been heavily involved in JetStream 3 as part of its open governance model. Chrome debuts very well on JetStream 3 while it will be interesting to see what optimizations Mozilla engineers pursue in the months ahead...
>
> In the recent Speedometer 3.1 benchmark update that is focused on browser responsiveness, Chrome was at 1.24x the performance of Firefox... Firefox picked up wins in the MotionMark and StyleBench browser benchmarks. Google Chrome meanwhile continued to dominate in the JavaScript heavy benchmarks... In some of the WebAssembly benchmarks, there was at least some healthy competition between Firefox and Chrome on Linux.
>
> Across the web browser benchmarks, the Core Ultra X7 358H power consumption came in at 11.44 Watts on average for Chrome and 11.74 Watts for Firefox. Quite close. The slight CPU power difference may come down to the CPU usage with Chrome coming in slightly lower at 8.13% on average to 8.35% with Firefox. Chrome also came in at slightly lower memory consumption across all the benchmarks with total memory usage on average at 4.67GB to Firefox at 4.83GB.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/firefox-chrome-2026
> JetStream 3.0 was announced at the end of March as the latest major web browser benchmark. This updated version of JetStream is focused on intensive portions of modern JavaScript and WebAssembly web applications... Google Chrome 147 came in at 1.47x the performance of Mozilla Firefox 149. A very strong showing for Google's web browser and to not much surprise Google engineers have been heavily involved in JetStream 3 as part of its open governance model. Chrome debuts very well on JetStream 3 while it will be interesting to see what optimizations Mozilla engineers pursue in the months ahead...
>
> In the recent Speedometer 3.1 benchmark update that is focused on browser responsiveness, Chrome was at 1.24x the performance of Firefox... Firefox picked up wins in the MotionMark and StyleBench browser benchmarks. Google Chrome meanwhile continued to dominate in the JavaScript heavy benchmarks... In some of the WebAssembly benchmarks, there was at least some healthy competition between Firefox and Chrome on Linux.
>
> Across the web browser benchmarks, the Core Ultra X7 358H power consumption came in at 11.44 Watts on average for Chrome and 11.74 Watts for Firefox. Quite close. The slight CPU power difference may come down to the CPU usage with Chrome coming in slightly lower at 8.13% on average to 8.35% with Firefox. Chrome also came in at slightly lower memory consumption across all the benchmarks with total memory usage on average at 4.67GB to Firefox at 4.83GB.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/firefox-chrome-2026
Mozilla money (Score:3)
by phantomfive ( 622387 )
Just a reminder, Mozilla has the money and resources to make the absolutely best browser around. They could have spent millions optimizing the current Firefox. They could have rewritten the entire thing from scratch in Rust. They could have implemented UI "modes" so everyone can have their favorite UI layout. They could have made the best, most performant dev tools of any browser.
They could have done all those things. They have the resources. Their focus needs to be on making the absolutely best browser in the world.
Firefox (Score:3)
by Thelasko ( 1196535 )
The performance metric that matters most is ad blocking.
Firefox in my case (Score:2)
Using 140.9-esr, Firefox is noticeably better in my laptop. Not exactly on power consumption but in these parameters:
Firefox is natively compiled from source and packaged for my distribution. I have to get chrome as a precompiled binary, perhaps not as efficiently as if it were done for my distro (Slackware)
In Firefox I have the "Take Screenshot" command at the right-click menu. This is a killer feature, seriously.
In Firefox I can use the full uBlock origin. In Chrome I can only use the neutered one.
These r
Re: (Score:2)
> In Firefox I can use the full uBlock origin. In Chrome I can only use the neutered one.
Important point. Firefox performance has never been an issue for me, but the ability to block ads and tracking is. Chrome may have better scores on performance benchmarks, but the fact that Google is an advertising company that will happily collect and sell my data any way they can, makes any benchmark wins moot. Put simply, it's not in Google's best interests to protect my privacy or allow me to shield myself for advertisements, so it's not in my best interests to trust Chrome.