Summary
Without giving it a second thought, Chrome is the easy scapegoat when it comes to hogging memory. It’s become a tech opinion that no one questions. I chose not to take it on faith and put it to the test. I updated my three most-used browsers, Brave, Firefox, and Chrome, to their latest versions, created a new profile, and opened the same 25 tabs in each. Then I measured how much RAM each browser used. There was a large gap between the first and the last, and, interestingly, the browser blamed the most wasn’t the highest memory user. The results after opening the same 25 tabs What made this comparison hard to argue with | Browser | Version tested | Private Working Set | Commited Charge (before → after) | |---|---|---|---| | Brave | 1.93.129 | 4,504MB | 5.5 → 8.7GB | | Chrome | 150.0.7871.187 | 8,161MB | 5.5 → 10.4GB | | Firefox | 153.0.1 | 10,155MB | 5.5 → 13.0GB | Private Working Set reflects physical RAM currently in use, while Commit Charge shows the total virtual memory reserved by the browser. With the same 25 tabs open, Brave used about half as much memory Firefox consumed. Chrome, surprisingly, also used less memory than Firefox, even though it needed almost double what Brave consumed to hold the same number of tabs. The margin of about 5.6GB between the top and the bottom is too large to be dismissed as a measurement error, especially when all the browsers are actually doing is sitting there with their tabs open. However, I didn’t just trust a single number. I made sure that each browser got a reboot and a clean start so that there wasn’t anything lingering in memory from a previous test. They also got fresh temporary profiles. I wasn’t signed in to any accounts, and there were no extensions either. The 25 tabs were opened in the same order, and I let them rest untouched for about three minutes before I started recording any results. At this point, network activity had settled. Just to be sure the results were consistent, I compared the Committed Charge readings from Windows’ own Task Manager with PowerShell’s numbers for each browser. They showed the same relative ordering. This showed that my measurements weren’t just one tool’s quirks; they were capturing real readings. For slower or lower-spec machines, the difference can become noticeable across the three browsers. Why the “RAM hog” label doesn’t match the results More memory used isn’t the same as memory wasted I was surprised while investigating why, especially since both Chrome and Brave run on the same underlying engine. They have the same rendering code, process model, and core architecture. Yet, with an identical set of tabs, Chrome used almost twice as much memory as Brave. The easy explanation would have been Chromium, but this was Chromium versus Chromium. The difference comes down to smaller decisions, even if they rest on the same foundation. I’m talking about how aggressively a browser reclaims memory from idle tabs, what the browser caches versus what it releases, and the number of helper processes it launches by default. I really can’t point to a single setting as the one big factor, but these choices are the kind that make a difference. Also, using more memory doesn’t automatically mean one browser is doing something wrong. In fact, switching back to a tab typically feels more instant when the browser caches pages in RAM. Just because one browser uses 4GB of RAM and another sits on 10GB doesn’t automatically make one efficient and the other bloated. The one using extra RAM may only be holding onto data so that it can hand it back to you faster. So, I’d rather view a RAM measurement as a snapshot of a specific moment and not a hard-set verdict. What kind of browsing actually made the memory climb The workload matters as much as the browser I chose a very diverse set of tabs for this test, and each affected the results differently. Across all three browsers, the tabs that needed the most resources were the video tab, the WebGL-heavy pages, and Google Docs and Sheets. These tabs were actively decoding video, rendering graphics, or running background scripts, whereas the other tabs I included were simply static pages. Since the whole set was measured together as a realistic browsing session, it’s not possible to tell you specifics, like exactly how much memory Gmail used versus YouTube. However, one constant is that the gap shown in this test will matter more to you if your browsing includes video, design tools, or spreadsheets. The choice of browser will matter less to anyone who mainly browses static pages. The honest answer depends on your machine, not the winner | Your RAM | Does this actually matter? | |---|---| | 8GB | Most noticeable | | 16GB | Only if you keep dozens of tabs open | | 32GB | Rarely, if ever | Brave, Firefox, or Chrome wouldn’t make your machine feel any different if it has 32GB of RAM that’s mostly sitting idle. However, juggling 20+ tabs on 8GB of RAM can easily be the difference between smooth multitasking and constant stuttering, depending on the browser. However, all three browsers have a performance setting that is worth enabling. In Chrome, it’s called Memory Saver, and you can find it in Settings → Performance. You can find the same option in Brave by navigating to Menu → Settings → System → Performance. Firefox automatically unloads inactive tabs under memory pressure, and advanced users can manually unload tabs through its internal tools. In the end, before deciding if this is worth switching browsers for, consider your browsing habits, your device specs, and the current state of your browsing experience. These will determine whether anything truly has to change.