Benchmarking Browsers by Page Load Times

May 06 2010

Recent comparisons of browsers focus on JavaScript speed. There are many ways to measure browser performance, including image load time, reloading from cache, start time, and css rendering speed. While Opera was in the lead a few years ago, it has been branded as the fastest browser again.

snapshot2
You should notice the ad on the left for Chrome. So which one is the fastest? I ran the tests on Linux and Windows.

Benchmark Method

There’s nothing special about using JavaScript to detect when onload is fired by the browser, as long as the browser follows the convention that it is fired after the page is loaded. This used to be an issue I noted to the point of just using Firefox and ignoring other browsers. According to this article, it was fixed 2 years ago. So I took the benchmark from the site and ran it. Not surprisingly, Firefox came out highest on the score. Actually, that’s a negative score. Ideally, the page takes no time to load.

Linux

Google Chrome for Linux is different from the one for Windows, as the benchmark would load the first site for the first time, but could not time it nor reload it. Opera got stuck on MySpace once and kept adding more elements to the page, possibly due to an ad that is not usually loaded locally. I ran these tests on Sabayon Linux with kernel 2.6.30 (I expect 2.6.33 to be faster, since it has been patched with Con Koliva’s kernel enhancements). An interesting note here, not seen in other parts of the result set, is that Arora took longer to load pages on the first time, but was faster on all subsequent reloads. The total score for Arora comes second to Opera. On another note, Firefox with the same extensions, ran faster on Linux than Windows.

Firefox 3.6.3 Arora 0.10.2
Beginning Benchmark Beginning Benchmark
baidu.com.htm baidu.com.htm
692 1461
356 47
348 37
338 49
352 25
345 26
1046 26
356 27
344 28
356 27
Site Average: 453.3 Site Average: 175.3
blogger.com.htm blogger.com.htm
445 2408
285 202
283 205
269 206
272 197
283 197
262 200
271 190
262 194
259 193
Site Average: 289.1 Site Average: 419.2
facebook.com.htm facebook.com.htm
472 515
450 315
447 305
628 304
463 309
476 314
469 319
579 316
459 318
453 319
Site Average: 489.6 Site Average: 333.4
google.com.htm google.com.htm
123 84
109 21
96 20
108 21
102 21
106 21
94 22
91 21
94 22
94 21
Site Average: 101.7 Site Average: 27.4
havenworks.com.htm havenworks.com.htm
3639 4103
2587 217
2793 202
2598 202
2635 203
2614 203
2612 203
2594 204
2585 207
2572 216
Site Average: 2722.9 Site Average: 596
live.com.htm live.com.htm
305 413
153 101
154 79
157 82
152 74
159 84
160 74
166 79
143 76
149 89
Site Average: 169.8 Site Average: 115.1
myspace.com.tom.htm myspace.com.tom.htm
1429 1965
1230 759
1233 778
1235 764
1243 818
1229 753
1227 766
1275 775
1269 774
1224 769
Site Average: 1259.4 Site Average: 892.1
reddit.com.htm reddit.com.htm
604 586
557 399
542 397
541 392
523 404
513 393
766 400
521 385
533 386
525 382
Site Average: 562.5 Site Average: 412.4
wikipedia.org.htm wikipedia.org.htm
670 4110
242 36
232 49
231 34
470 34
232 31
236 30
229 32
227 31
239 49
Site Average: 300.8 Site Average: 443.6
Benchmark Complete
Score 705.455555555556 379.388888888889
First Page Load Average 931 1738.33333333333
Website http://gentoo-portage.com/www-client/mozilla-firefox http://gentoo-portage.com/www-client/arora

Windows

Not surprisingly, the winners on Windows were 32 bit browsers. Aside from the small speed increase due to smaller pointer sizes in 32 bit applications, I think Opera and Chrome are faster browsers, as they advertise. A surprising result is that 64 bit IE ran faster than 64 bit Firefox. I noticed that a while ago, but decided to stick with Firefox because it has add-ons. Iron is a stripped down version of Chrome compiled from source. It should be slightly faster, with the slimmer binary and no personal tracking features. I ran this on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit Version 6.1 (Build 7600).

Firefox 3.6.3 Opera 10.52 Iron 4.0.280 Internet Explorer
Beginning Benchmark Beginning Benchmark Beginning Benchmark Beginning Benchmark
baidu.com.htm baidu.com.htm baidu.com.htm baidu.com.htm
863 720 783 835
409 12 9 42
402 12 7 44
407 11 8 44
385 12 9 38
391 11 8 42
407 12 9 38
403 11 8 41
401 12 9 36
405 11 11 42
Site Average: 447.3 Site Average: 82.4 Site Average: 86.1 Site Average: 120.2
blogger.com.htm blogger.com.htm blogger.com.htm blogger.com.htm
398 220 333 220
143 72 38 90
140 69 38 85
138 73 38 85
140 70 41 86
140 72 37 75
150 70 42 76
140 72 36 72
140 70 41 73
138 72 37 85
Site Average: 166.7 Site Average: 86 Site Average: 68.1 Site Average: 94.7
facebook.com.htm facebook.com.htm facebook.com.htm facebook.com.htm
476 267 273 356
397 289 128 275
368 224 133 282
489 222 129 283
359 223 127 280
356 222 127 287
353 223 125 280
453 232 126 281
363 227 125 288
352 222 128 277
Site Average: 396.6 Site Average: 235.1 Site Average: 142.1 Site Average: 288.9
google.com.htm google.com.htm google.com.htm google.com.htm
135 40 21 70
70 13 11 52
70 14 11 37
70 13 10 46
70 14 10 37
70 14 11 48
70 14 11 43
70 13 11 34
70 14 11 36
70 14 11 50
Site Average: 76.5 Site Average: 16.3 Site Average: 11.8 Site Average: 45.3
havenworks.com.htm havenworks.com.htm havenworks.com.htm havenworks.com.htm
4024 867 736 2325
2863 655 279 2232
2873 659 278 2231
2866 665 280 2259
2852 700 282 2291
2855 663 285 2480
2880 650 276 2297
2930 668 280 2251
2866 666 277 2225
2860 654 279 2233
Site Average: 2986.9 Site Average: 684.7 Site Average: 325.2 Site Average: 2282.4
live.com.htm live.com.htm live.com.htm live.com.htm
254 280 235 125
95 75 38 132
95 78 42 131
107 75 38 125
98 77 39 137
96 77 40 125
96 74 40 104
96 74 40 99
96 74 39 115
95 76 38 103
Site Average: 112.8 Site Average: 96 Site Average: 58.9 Site Average: 119.6
myspace.com.tom.htm myspace.com.tom.htm myspace.com.tom.htm myspace.com.tom.htm
1253 1489 1573 2032
927 1377 3451 1287
928 1541 1131 4756
1535 3978 1902 1749
958 1111 1710 1436
941 1080 1622 1152
928 1103 4948 1918
924 1081 2927 1222
952 1388 1713 1230
930 1049 3505 1260
Site Average: 1027.6 Site Average: 1519.7 Site Average: 2448.2 Site Average: 1804.2
reddit.com.htm reddit.com.htm reddit.com.htm reddit.com.htm
552 246 259 541
425 166 167 463
424 163 165 483
418 164 167 478
608 164 166 478
429 165 166 480
424 165 166 485
422 165 166 481
432 164 167 495
425 164 167 483
Site Average: 455.9 Site Average: 172.6 Site Average: 175.6 Site Average: 486.7
wikipedia.org.htm wikipedia.org.htm wikipedia.org.htm wikipedia.org.htm
1105 726 955 967
166 78 34 260
164 66 33 255
163 66 34 262
163 66 32 253
165 67 32 260
163 71 35 258
164 72 36 256
162 71 33 267
163 71 34 256
Site Average: 257.8 Site Average: 135.4 Site Average: 125.8 Site Average: 329.4
Benchmark Complete
Score 658.677777777778 336.466666666667 382.422222222222 619.044444444444
First Page Load Average 1006.66666666667 539.444444444445 574.222222222222 830.111111111111
Website www.mozilla-x86-64.com/ http://www.opera.com/ http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Conclusion

Opera beat all other browsers, just with its default settings. A little more tuning of redraw rate and memory use could improve the score. I expect the real results when browsing to deviate. Chrome and Firefox has DNS prefetching, Firefox and Opera have pipelining. To improve that DNS fetch speed in Opera, you can set your system to use OpenDNS to resolve domain names.

Linux

Google Chrome for Linux is different from the one for Windows, as the benchmark would load the first site for the first time, but could not time it nor reload it. Opera got stuck on MySpace once and kept adding more elements to the page, possibly due to an ad that is not usually loaded locally. I ran these tests on Sabayon Linux with kernel 2.6.30 (I expect 2.6.33 to be faster, since it has been patched with Con Koliva’s kernel enhancements). An interesting note here, not seen in other parts of the result set, is that Arora took longer to load pages on the first time, but was faster on all subsequent reloads. The total score for Arora comes second to Opera. On another note, Firefox with the same extensions, ran faster on Linux than Windows.

After the Benchmark (you should decide which browser to use)

I measured the memory use!

mem

It looks Chrome and IE were designed for really cheap laptops. (They can’t run on old computers with Windows 2000.)

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