Chrome used 10X More RAM than Safari on macOS Big Sur in a recent Test

Under normal and lightweight web browsing, Google Chrome uses 10x more RAM than Safari on macOS Big Sur, according to a test conducted by Flotato creator Morten Just (via iMore).

In a blog post, Just explains that he tested both browsers in two instances of the latest version of macOS. The first was tested on a virtual machine, and the second on a 16-inch MacBook Pro 2019 with 32GB of RAM. In the first round of testing, it was just like a normal browsing pattern of opening Twitter, scrolling around, and then opening a new tab with Gmail and making up an email.

Under that test, just found that Chrome reached 1GB of RAM usage, while Safari used only 80MB of RAM. The two-tab test was just the beginning, however.

With 54 tabs open, Google Chrome just discovered that Google Chrome used 24x more RAM per tab compared to Safari. Both browsers, according to Direct, were free of any extensions, and this particular test was done on his real MacBook Pro, not a virtual machine. According to its findings, Chrome used 290MB of RAM per open tab, while Safari used only 12MB of RAM per open tab.

While the results are bare, Just says that Google Chrome seems to be “going out of its way to manage its memory usage across tabs,” in an effort to keep the tab custom ” fast and responsive. “In his tests, Just finds that his own application, Flotato, used a lightweight alternative to Chrome that creates web – based applications, much less RAM than both. Safari and Chrome.

Chrome is known to be a memory hog on both Mac and Windows computers, an issue that Google recently tried to resolve.

With ‌macOS Big Sur‌, Safari received major updates that saw it go beyond Chrome. Apple claims that Safari on ‌macOS Big Sur‌ is “50% faster on average at loading frequently visited websites than Chrome,” and that Safari offers up to an hour and a half longer video streaming, and up to an hour longer normal web browsing at a single cost, compared to Chrome and Firefox.