Searching the internet is now an every day part of life, which means that the browser you use can be the difference between a simple and easy user experience, or a clunky hellscape.
The best web browsers should provide a user interface that is intuitive to use and deliver fast and accurate results for all your queries, without slowing down your device or compromising its security.
To help you get the best balance of these features, we have tested all of the most popular browsers to identify their pros and cons, including performance, device compatibility, security, ease of use, and customization.
For the security savvy among you, it may be worth taking a look at the best anonymous browsers and pairing it with one of the best VPNs with antivirus to ensure a private and secure browsing experience that keeps your data safe from any lurking malware.
Or for those looking to keep your family safe from online threats, we have compiled the best parental control apps to hide unsavory content and the best identity theft protection to stop your personal information from ending up in the wrong hands.
We've also listed the best firewalls.
The best web browsers of 2024 in full:
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Best web browser overall
Older readers will remember Microsoft as the villains of the Browser Wars that ultimately led to the fall of Netscape and the rise of Firefox, and later on Chrome. But Microsoft is on the side of the angels now and its Edge browser has been rebuilt with Chromium at its heart. It’s Windows’ default browser and there are also versions for iOS, Android, and Mac.
The latest Edge is considerably faster than its predecessor and includes some useful features including Read Aloud, the ability to cast media such as inline videos to Chromecast devices, integrated AI tools including Bing Chat and Image Creator, and a good selection of add-ons such as password managers, ad-blockers, and so on. You can also download web pages as apps which then run as stand-alone applications without having to launch the whole browser. That’s useful for the likes of Google Docs or Twitter.
There are lots of customization options and we particularly liked the Privacy and Services page, which makes potentially confusing settings crystal clear. Elsewhere, the Site Permissions page gives you fine-grained control over what specific sites can do, including everything from pop-ups and ad blocking to MIDI device access and media autoplay.
Edge looks like Chrome and works like Chrome, but we like it more than Chrome: it’s noticeably faster on our Mac and the customization options are superb.
Read our full Microsoft Edge review.
Best web browser for security
Firefox has long been the Swiss Army Knife of the internet and one of our favorite browsers. It can alert you if your email address is included in a known data breach, it blocks those annoying allow-notifications popups, it blocks “fingerprinting” browser tracking and it brings its picture in picture video mode to the Mac version.
As before it’s endlessly customizable both in terms of its appearance and in the range of extensions and plugins you can use. Last year’s overhaul dramatically improved its performance, which was starting to lag behind the likes of Chrome, and it’s smooth and solid even on fairly modest hardware.
Firefox, one of the best browsers for a long time, is certainly a great choice for any internet user. It comes with a diverse range of features, beats Chrome in terms of privacy, is easy to use, and is also lightning-quick.
Plus, it doesn't ask for too much space either, so you don't have to think twice before installing it. What's more, Firefox also has multiple customization options — whether you want to stick to the default theme or experiment with a thousand other themes, the choice is yours.
Read our full Mozilla Firefox review.
Best web browser for collecting content
Opera sets out its stall the moment you first run it: its splash screen enables you to turn on its built-in ad blocker, use its built-in VPN, turn on its Crypto Wallet for cryptocurrency, enable in-browser messaging from the sidebar, and move between light or dark modes.
It’s a great introduction to a really good browser, although if you’re a gamer you should check out Opera GX instead: that’s designed specifically for gamers and features Twitch integration and Razer Chroma support.
Opera is yet another Chromium-based browser, so performance is speedy and you can use add-ons from the Chrome library. It also has some interesting ideas of its own such as My Flow: if you’re constantly emailing or messaging interesting links to yourself, Flow enables you to do that more elegantly by making it easy to share content from Opera on your phone to Opera on your computer.
But that's just the start. Opera's more advanced features include Aria, a powerful OpenAI-powered assistant which makes it easy to explain or summarize complex content, generate ideas and recommendations, translate text, or create new content of your own: emails, blog posts, letters, even poems or songs.
Although some people still see Opera as an also-ran in the browser world, it's improved in leaps and bounds in recent years, and the latest innovations ensure it's a browser to watch both now and in the future.
Read our full Opera browser review.
Best web browser for a mix of everything
If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery then Microsoft’s adoption of the Chromium engine for its own Edge browser must be making Google feel pretty good about itself.
But there are some areas in which Microsoft’s contender actually beats the big G, most noticeably in resource usage: Chrome is infamous for its hefty resource demands and it can run really slow on lower-end hardware and RAM (albeit more on Windows than ChromeOS, queue conspiracy theories).
The Memory Saver mode is designed to address that by freeing up resources from tabs you're not currently using, but Chrome remains pretty hardware-hungry.
Chrome is by no means a bad browser. Quite the contrary: it’s a brilliant browser with a superb library of add-ons, cross-platform support and sync, excellent autofill features, and some great tools for web developers.
It can warn you if your email’s been compromised, it has secure DNS lookup for compatible providers (Google’s own Public DNS is one of them) and it blocks lots of dangerous mixed content such as scripts and images on otherwise secure connections.
Perhaps best of all, if you're tired of suspicious websites asking you to 'click every tile containing a bicycle', Chrome now includes new ways to tell sites you're a human, not a bot, hopefully reducing the number of annoying captchas you'll see.
However, all this kind of gets rolled back by the fact that Chrome is owned and operated by Google as a means of collecting data from its users, regardless of what the company says about privacy. Secure it is, private it isn't.
Read our full Google Chrome review.
Best web browser for customization
Vivaldi is the brainchild of former Opera developers, and like Opera, it does things differently from the big-name browsers. In this case, very differently. Vivaldi is all about customization, and you can tweak pretty much everything from the way navigation works to how the user interface looks.
Chromium is once again under the surface here (which means you can use most Chrome add-ons), but what’s on top is very different from other Chromium-based browsers. You can pin sites to the sidebar, stick toolbars wherever suits and adjust pages’ fonts and color schemes; have a notes panel as well as the usual history and bookmarks bits; customize the way search works and give search engines nicknames; change how tabs work and get grouped and much, much more.
You can even view your history in graph form to see just how much of your time you’ve been spending on particular sites. We particularly like the tab stacks, which are a boon for anyone who tends to end up trying to keep track of dozens of open tabs.
If you’re the kind of person who likes to fiddle with interfaces instead of getting on with stuff, it’s a potential productivity nightmare – but it’s fantastic for power users who know exactly what they want and how they want it to work.
Read our full Vivaldi browser review.
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Best web browser FAQs
What is a web browser?
A web browser is a tool that enables users to surf and access websites that are on the internet.
There are plenty of web browsers, but the most popular options are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, and Opera.
How to choose the best web browsers for you?
Selecting a web browser to use for the long term is a very personal thing, and will depend on your individual browsing security, privacy and accessibility needs. From a technical perspective, it will also depend on what your computer is able to handle in terms of processing speed, and memory capacity.
For example, if privacy is your primary deciding factor in a browser, Firefox or Brave browser will be your best bet. Although if you're used to using Google software and products, opting for Chrome may be a better option.
How we test
We've tested the best web browsers on factors like interface, speed, security, and other accessibility features. We evaluated their customizability, cross-platform support, and system requirements.
We also mentioned if the browsers had additional security features like VPN or proxy.
Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.
More reviews
Also see our reviews for the following browsers:
- Brave browser review
- Safari browser review
- Tor Browser review
- Avast browser review
- Mullvad browser review
- Maxthon browser review
- DuckDuckGo Private Browser review
- Phoenix browser review
- Aloha browser review
- Opera Mini review
- Firefox Focus review
- Samsung Internet Browser
- UR Browser review
- Epic Browser review
We've also listed the best parental control software.
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