Note: Results have been updated with latest Firefox 52 and Chrome 59. Previous benchmarks:
- Firefox 41/Chromium 45: see revision
- Firefox 35/Chromium 39: see revision
Setup
- Ensure the blocker is the only active extension (to avoid results to be polluted by other extensions)
- Ensure click-to-play (or whatever equivalent) is enabled before launching the benchmark
- How blockers were configured:
- uBlock Origin: default settings.
- Adblock Plus: EasyList + EasyPrivacy, minus "acceptable ads".
Steps
- Have the benchmarked blocker enabled and properly setup
- Have only the "new tab" opened
- Quit Firefox
- Launch Firefox
- Paste http://news.yahoo.com/ in address bar, wait for page to finish loading
- Open new tab, paste http://news.google.com/, wait for page to finish loading
- Open new tab, paste http://www.huffingtonpost.com/, wait for page to finish loading
- Open new tab, paste http://www.cnn.com/, wait for page to finish loading
- Open new tab, paste http://www.nytimes.com/, wait for page to finish loading
- Open new tab, paste http://www.foxnews.com/, wait for page to finish loading
- Open new tab, paste http://www.nbcnews.com/, wait for page to finish loading
- Open new tab, paste http://www.dailymail.co.uk/, wait for page to finish loading
- Open new tab, paste http://www.washingtonpost.com/, wait for page to finish loading
- Open new tab, paste http://www.theguardian.com/, wait for page to finish loading
- Open new tab, paste https://news.ycombinator.com/, wait for page to finish loading
- Leave the browser idle for two minutes
- Open new tab, paste
about:memory
, wait for page to finish loading - Firefox: Click "Minimize memory usage" button in "Free memory" section
- Firefox: Click Measure button in "Show memory reports" section
- Firefox: Write down "Explicit Allocations" value (see notes below) / Chromium: Write down Σ value
So I did the exact above steps for no blocker, ABP, uBlock.
Results
- Firefox 52 (benchmark results updated on April 3rd, 2017)
- Two measurements needed with FF 52.0: Main Process + Web Content
- No blocker: 175 MB + 1,397 MB = 1,572 MB (reference memory usage)
- Adblock Plus 2.8.2: 241 MB + 626 MB = 867 MB (reference minus 705 MB)
- uBlock Origin 1.11.4: 176 MB + 488 MB = 664 MB (reference minus 908 MB, ABP minus 203 MB)
- Chrome 59 (benchmark results updated on April 3rd, 2017)
- No blocker: 1,615 MB (reference memory usage)
- Adblock Plus 1.13.2: 1,253 MB (reference minus 362 MB)
- uBlock Origin 1.11.4: 832 MB (reference minus 783 MB, ABP minus 421 MB)
Important: You can't compare directly the figures between the browsers -- they are taken using different methodology from one browser to the other. The benchmarks are more to compare the figures for various blockers within the same browser.
Notes
No other extensions were present.
For Firefox, I chose the "Explicit Allocations" figure because as per Firefox, it is "the single best number to focus on" with regard to memory usage.
Without going into details, hardware is i5 quadcore + 8 GB
If other users feel like repeating the tests, it would be nice just to confirm I got everything right.
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- Wiki home
- About the Wiki documentation
- Permissions
- Privacy policy
- Info:
- The toolbar icon
- The popup user interface
- The context menu
- Dashboard
- Settings pane
- Filter lists pane
- My filters pane
- My rules pane
- Trusted sites pane
- Keyboard shortcuts
- The logger
- Element picker
- Element zapper
- Blocking mode
- Very easy mode
- Easy mode (default)
- Medium mode (optimal for advanced users)
- Hard mode
- Nightmare mode
- Strict blocking
- Few words about re-design of uBO's user interface
- Reference answers to various topics seen in the wild
- Overview of uBlock's network filtering engine
- Overview of uBlock's network filtering engine: details
- Does uBlock Origin block ads or just hide them?
- Doesn't uBlock Origin add overhead to page load?
- About "Why uBlock Origin works so much better than Pi‑hole does?"
- uBlock's blocking and protection effectiveness:
- uBlock's resource usage and efficiency:
- Memory footprint: what happens inside uBlock after installation
- uBlock vs. ABP: efficiency compared
- Counterpoint: Who cares about efficiency, I have 8 GB RAM and|or a quad core CPU
- Debunking "uBlock Origin is less efficient than Adguard" claims
- Myth: uBlock consumes over 80MB
- Myth: uBlock is just slightly less resource intensive than Adblock Plus
- Myth: uBlock consumes several or several dozen GB of RAM
- Various videos showing side by side comparison of the load speed of complex sites
- Own memory usage: benchmarks over time
- Contributed memory usage: benchmarks over time
- Can uBO crash a browser?
- Tools, tests
- Deploying uBlock Origin
- Proposal for integration/unit testing
- uBlock Origin Core (Node.js):
- Troubleshooting:
- Good external guides:
- Scientific papers
uBlock Origin - An efficient blocker for Chromium and Firefox. Fast and lean.