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) [±]
Dillo	Jorge Arellano Cid et al.	Active	Dillo	C, C++	GPLv3	3.0.5[10] (30 June 2015) [±]
ELinks	Petr Baudiš, Jonas Fonseca, et al.	Active	Links	C, C++	GPLv2	0.11.7[11] (22 August 2009) [±]
K-Meleon	Christophe Thibault et al.	Active	Gecko	C++	GPL	75.1 (September 19, 2015[12]) [±]
Links	Mikuláš Patočka, Twibright Labs, et al.	Active	Links	C	GPLv2+	2.13[13] (1 July 2016) [±]
Lynx	Lou Montulli, Thomas Dickey, et al.	Active	libwww derivative	C (ISO C)	GPLv2	2.8.8[14] (9 March 2014) [±]
Midori	Christian Dywan et al.	Active	WebKitGTK+	Vala, C	LGPL v2.1+	0.5.11 [±]
NetSurf	John-Mark Bell, Michael Drake, et al.[15]	Active	NetSurf	C (ANSI C)	GPLv2	3.6[16] (19 November 2016) [±]
Pale Moon	M.C. Straver	Active	Goanna	C, C++	MPL	27.0.2 (December 2, 2016[17]) [±]
QtWeb	LogicWare; LSoft Technologies[18]	Unmaintained	QtWebKit	C++	GPL	3.8.5[19] (9 September 2013) [±]
QupZilla	David Rosca	Active	QtWebKit	C++	GPLv3	2.0.1 (June 8, 2016[20]) [±]
rekonq	Andrea Diamantini et al.	Unmaintained	QtWebKit[8]	C++	GPLv3	2.4.2[21][22] (12 January 2014) [±]
surf	Christoph Lohmann et al.	Active	WebKitGTK+	C	MIT License	0.7 (19 December 2015[23]) [±]
uzbl	Dieter Plaetinck, et al.	Active	WebKitGTK+	C, Python	GPLv3	0.9 (February 28, 2016[24]) [±]
w3m	Akinori Ito et al.	Unmaintained	w3m	C	MIT License	0.5.3[25] (15 January 2011) [±]
WebPositive	Andrea Anzani, Ryan Leavengood, et al.	Active	HaikuWebkit	C++	MIT License	1.1-alpha (15 November 2013) [±]
xombrero	Marco Peerboom et al.	Active	WebKitGTK+	C, JavaScript	ISC license	1.6.3[26] (11 July 2013) [±]

Operating system support

Browser	BSD	Haiku	Linux	OpenIndiana	OS X	OS/2	QNX	RISC OS	Windows	Android
Arora	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes[27]	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	?
Dillo	Yes	No	Yes	Yes[28]	Yes	No	No	Yes[28]	Cygwin[28][29]	?
ELinks	Yes[30]	?	Yes[30]	Yes[30]	Yes[30]	Yes[30]	No[30]	Dropped[30]	?	?
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[31][32]	Yes	?
Midori	Yes	No	Yes	Unofficial[lower-roman 1]	No	No	No	No	Yes	?
NetSurf	Yes[33]	Yes[lower-roman 2]	Yes[33]	Yes[33]	Yes[33]	No	?	Yes[35]	No	?
Pale Moon	Unofficial[36]	No	Yes	No	Unofficial	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
QtWeb	Yes	Unofficial[37]	Yes	Unofficial[lower-roman 3]	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	?
QupZilla	Yes[38]	Yes[38]	Yes[38]	No	Yes[38]	Yes[38]	No	No	Yes[38]	?
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.^[27]
2. A binary for NetSurf v2.0 for Haiku is available. For v2.1 and higher, one must build it from source.^[34]
3. 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.^[39]

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[40]	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[42]	Partial[43]	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[45]	Yes	Yes
NetSurf	Yes[46]	Yes	No	Yes	N/A[lower-roman 3]	N/A[lower-roman 3]	No[47]	No
Pale Moon	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	95/100	408/555[48]	Yes	No
QtWeb	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	100/100[lower-roman 1][lower-roman 7]	234/550[49]	No[lower-roman 2]	No
QupZilla	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	100/100[lower-roman 1]	385/550[50]	Partial	No
rekonq	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	100/100[lower-roman 1]	385/555[51]	No[lower-roman 2]	Partial[52]
surf	Yes	Yes[lower-roman 6]	Yes	Yes	100/100[lower-roman 1]	385/500[53]	Yes	?
w3m	Yes[54]	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[55]	No	No
xombrero	Yes	Yes[lower-roman 6]	Yes	Yes	100/100	385/500[56]	Yes	?

Notes

1. Some tests take too much time to complete.
2. NPAPI is ported to QtWebKit, but is not implemented in this browser.
3. The test requires JavaScript, which is not sufficiently supported by this browser.
4. ELinks implements Mozilla's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine.^[41]
5. Only Links 2 supports graphics.
6. WebP is supported via the WebKitGTK+ browser engine.^[44]
7. The final state does not match the reference rendering.

See also

• Comparison of web browsers
• List of web browsers for Unix and Unix-like operating systems

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. 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 16 July 2016.
14. Dickey, Thomas E. (14 February 2014). "Stable release". lynx.isc.org. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
15. "The NetSurf Developers". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
16. "News". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 29 Nov 2016.
17. "Pale Moon Release Notes". Pale Moon. 2016-12-02. Retrieved 2016-12-02.
18. "About QtWeb". QtWeb.NET. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
19. "Qt Web Browser". QtWeb.NET. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
20. Rosca, David (8 June 2016). "QupZilla 2.0.1 released". QupZilla Blog.
21. "rekonq: Files". SourceForge. 12 January 2014. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
22. Diamantini, Andrea (12 January 2014). "rekonq 2.4.2". adjam.weblog(). Retrieved 29 August 2014.
23. "Index of /surf/". suckless.org. 19 December 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
24. "The uzbl web interface tools".
25. "w3m: Files". SourceForge. 15 January 2011. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
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27. "Spec Files Extra Repository". OpenIndiana Wiki. 2011. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
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29. Vibber, Kelson (28 April 2005). "Installing Dillo on Cygwin". Hyperborea. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
30. "About ELinks". elinks.cz. Retrieved 30 August 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. "GTK NetSurf Downloads". netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
34. "Haiku and BeOS NetSurf Downloads". netsurf-browser.org. 24 April 2009. Archived from the original on 11 January 2011. 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. "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

• Sugianto, Masim (18 January 2010). "7 Lightweight Linux Browsers You may want to Consider for Fast Browsing Experience". Spirit of Change. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
• Arimbra, Krishnan (17 July 2013). "3 Alternate Browsers – Lightweight browsers". Geekiest.Net. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
• Murray, Richard (2007). "RISC OS browsers". Rick's World. Retrieved 26 August 2014.