Comparison of browser engines

This article provides general information for browser engines, especially actively-developed ones.[lower-alpha 1]

Some of these engines have shared origins. For example, the WebKit engine was created by forking the KHTML engine in 2001.[1] Then, in 2013, a modified version of WebKit was officially forked as the Blink engine.[2]

General information
Engine Status[lower-alpha 1] Steward License Embedded in
WebKit Active Apple GNU LGPL, BSD-style Safari browser, plus all browsers for iOS[3]
Blink Active Google GNU LGPL, BSD-style Google Chrome and all other Chromium-based browsers, notably Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Samsung Internet and Opera[4]
Gecko Active Mozilla Mozilla Public Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client
Goanna Active M. C. Straver[5] Mozilla Public Pale Moon, Basilisk, and K-Meleon browsers
Flow Active Ekioh[6] Proprietary Flow browser[7]
MSHTML[lower-alpha 2] Maintained Microsoft Proprietary Internet Explorer browser
EdgeHTML Maintained Microsoft Proprietary UWP apps; formerly in the Edge browser[9]
KHTML Maintained KDE GNU LGPL Konqueror browser
Servo Maintained Linux Foundation Mozilla Public experimental browsers[10][11]
NetSurf[lower-alpha 3] Maintained hobbyists[13] GNU GPLv2 NetSurf browser[14]
Presto Discontinued Opera Proprietary formerly in the Opera browser

Operating system support

The operating systems that actively-developed engines can run on without emulation.

Engine Windows macOS iOS[3] Android Linux BSD
WebKit Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Blink Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Gecko Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Goanna Yes No[15] No No[16] Yes Yes
Flow[7] Yes Yes No Yes Yes No

See also

Notes
  1. Active status means that new Web standards continue to be added to the engine. However, Maintained status can be as minimal as ensuring the engine code still compiles. Discontinued is when the engine code is abandoned.
  2. Internet Explorer continues to receive security updates,[8] which means MSHTML is still maintained.
  3. NetSurf does not support HTML5 or other recent Web standards,[12] which means it cannot work properly at YouTube, Gmail, and many other popular websites. Thus it does not merit Active status per this article's criteria.

References
  1. Paul Festa (2003-01-14). "Apple snub stings Mozilla". CNET Networks. Archived from the original on 2009-09-06. Retrieved 2017-02-16.
  2. Bright, Peter (April 3, 2013). "Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine". Ars Technica. Conde Nast. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
  3. "Open-sourcing Chrome on iOS!". 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  4. "Current browser market share". StatCounter. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
  5. M. C. Straver. "About Moonchild Productions". Archived from the original on 2017-03-13. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
  6. "About Ekioh". Ekioh.
  7. "Flow Browser". Ekioh.
  8. "Lifecycle FAQ – Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge – Microsoft Lifecycle". docs.microsoft.com. Retrieved August 30, 2020.
  9. Mackie, Kurt (10 December 2018). "Microsoft Edge Browser To Get New Rendering Engine but EdgeHTML Continues". Redmond Mag. Retrieved 21 December 2019.
  10. "A new browser for Magic Leap". 2018-12-03. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  11. "Firefox Reality for HoloLens 2". 2020-05-21. Retrieved 2020-07-17.
  12. "Development Progress". NetSurf. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  13. "NetSurf Developer page". Netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  14. "NetSurf web browser homepage". Netsurf-browser.org. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  15. "Remove support for MacOS". repo.palemoon.org. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  16. "Pale Moon for Android is dead". forum.palemoon.org. April 2019. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
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