Chrome has used 10 times more RAM than Safari on macOS Big Sur in recent tests

According to a test by the creator of Flotato Morten Just (through normal and light web browsing, Google Chrome uses 10 times more RAM than Safari in MacOS Big Sur) Me more).

In a blog post, Just explains that he tested both browsers in two scenarios of the latest version of macOS. The first test was performed on a virtual machine and the second on a 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM. In the first round of testing, Just simulated a typical browsing pattern: open Twitter, scroll everywhere, and open a new tab with Gmail and compose an email.

According to this test, I just checked that Chrome got 1GB of RAM usage, while Safari only used 80MB of RAM. However, the two-tab test was just the beginning.

With 54 tabs open, Google Chrome was found to use 24 times more RAM per tab compared to Safari. Both browsers, according to Just, had no extension, and this specific test was performed on their real MacBook Pro, not on a virtual machine. According to its findings, Chrome used 290 MB of RAM per open tab, while Safari only used 12 MB of RAM per open tab.

While the results are sharp, Just says Google Chrome is likely to “do its best to manage its memory usage across tabs,” in efforts to keep the current tab “fast and responsive.” In his tests, Just finds that his own app, Flotato, a lightweight alternative to Chrome that creates web-based apps, used much less RAM than Safari and Chrome.

Chrome is known to be a memory hog on Mac and Windows computers, a problem Google has recently tried to fix.

With ‌macOS Big Sur‌, Safari received major updates that made Chrome even better. Apple says Safari on acmacOS Big Sur‌ is “50% faster on average when it loads frequently visited websites than Chrome” and that Safari provides up to an hour and a half more real-time video playback and up to an hour more than normal web browsing on a single upload, compared to Chrome and Firefox.