The Fastest Browser for Android: 17 Android Browsers Tested

When Android became available in 2008, it featured a couple of basic apps such as calculators, email, notepad etc… Back then, Android only had one app to surf the internet and it’s called “Browser.”

Now, things have changed. The advancement of technology brought Android to far greater heights. Due to this, surfing the web was not as simple as how it was before. Now, it’s also about using the best and the fastest browser app available for Android.

Must Read: Top 7 Lightweight Browsers for Android

Speaking of fast, one of the most searched information on Google is about the fastest Android browser. With this in mind, we selected and tested 17 of the most downloaded Android internet browser app on the Google Play store.

What’s left now is the answer to the ultimate question of “What is the fastest browser for Android?”

17 Best Browsers for Android Tested

To know which app is the fastest Internet browser for Android, we selected 17 of the most downloaded and used web surfing app available on the Google Play store. Using each browser apps, we run a couple of benchmark tools for Android. This will let us get an actual performance of each browser in numbers. By doing so, we can easily determine which Android browser app performs well and which is the fastest.

Android Browser App Testing Methodology

For our test, we will be using a couple of tools that are listed below.

Benchmarking Hardware

• Huawei P10

Benchmarking Platforms

• JetStream 1.1
• ARES-6
• MotionMark
• Speedometer 2.0

Android Browser Apps

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• UC Browser
• Dolphin Browser
• Opera
• Brave Browser
• Cake Browser
• Microsoft Edge
• Mint Browser
• CM Browser
• DuckDuckGo Browser
• Kiwi Browser
• Samsung Browser
• Phoenix Browser
• Puffin
• Pure Browser
• Stargon Browser

Benchmarking Test Result

When doing benchmarks, one of our main procedure is to restart our testing device for each test. By doing so, this eliminates any possible performance interference due to background processes of certain apps. This would also prevent any potential bottleneck performance issues. Furthermore, our testing device is being charged for each and every benchmark.

Additionally, our testing device was set to factory default while having the latest firmware and system update. So we could get the most accurate result for each benchmark possible.

JetStream 1.1

JetStream is a popular JavaScript benchmarking tool that focuses on advanced web applications. Basically, it is a combined variety of advanced JavaScript workloads and programming techniques. For this benchmark, the higher the score, the better the performance.

So for this benchmark, we benchmarked each app 6 times and each run performs 3 iterations. In these 6 runs, we recorded the best score that the app could get.

After testing all 17 browser apps, Puffin Browser leads by an enormous margin followed by CM Browser. Puffin is also the only browser that exceeded a 100 score mark. Basically, this means that the Puffin browser is more responsive and faster than the rest drastically.

ARES-6

ARES-6 is a benchmarking tool that simply measures the execution time of the newest features of JavaScript. Generally, it is comprised of 4 different sub-tests such as Air, Basic, Babylon, and ML.

For this benchmark, we benchmarked each browser for 6 times. Each run also performs 6 iterations. After performing 6 runs, we only recorded the best result that each app could get.

The Puffin Browser app yet leads again in this benchmark. Puffin finishes in just 34.37 ms which is about 960% faster than FireFox, finishing at 330.75 ms. We were expecting somewhat similar results with a 10 to 20% difference but we were not expecting FireFox to be this slow.

MotionMark

One of the main benchmark test found on BrowserBench is MotionMark. This benchmarking tool puts the browser to graphics rendering performance test. Basically, this benchmark draws different multiple 2D rendering elements. Pushing the rendering performance of the browser to its limits.

For this test, we performed 3 runs per app. In each run, tons of 2D rendering tests are done.

As expected, Puffin exceptionally outperforms the other browser apps. Puffin is also the only browser app for Android that exceeded a 100 score mark.

Speedometer 2.0

Last but not least, we have the Speedometer benchmark. This benchmarking tool measures the browser’s Web app responsiveness. Timing simulated user interactions for adding, completing, and removing to-do items via TodoMVC.

Basically, this app simulates actual user usage. This will then test the overall responsiveness of the app. We also performed 6 runs for this benchmark when each run performs 12 iterations.

Puffin yet again wins this test by scoring 45.1 runs per minute on average. It’s almost 200% faster and better in terms of performance compared to the second fastest app, the CM Browser. This goes to show that Puffin is really the faster browser for Android available on Google Play store.

Fastest Browser for Android Overall Benchmark Result

Summing up all the data we got from each benchmark results, we can conclude that the Puffin Browser is the fastest Android Internet Browser app. It exceptionally performs well and it gave us outstanding results from all of our tests.

Now, let’s take a closer look at 6 of the apps that performed well on our tests.

Top 5 of the Fastest Browser for Android (Based on our Tests)

After performing various benchmarking tests on all 17 Android Browser apps. We can conclude that our top 5 is Puffin, CM, Brave, DuckDuckGo, and Cake.