Ladybird
FreeThe first new browser engine in a decade — and not yet usable
An independent browser written from scratch, based on neither Chromium, WebKit nor Gecko — the only genuinely new browser engine in over a decade. It uses a multi-process architecture with separate renderer, image decoder and network processes. Development is run by a non-profit with sponsorship from Shopify, Cloudflare, Proton and JetBrains. It is currently pre-alpha and, in the project's own words, "only suitable for use by developers".
Why we picked it
66,100 stars, BSD-2-Clause, a browser engine written from nothing.
The important part first: there is no build you can download. The site offers no alpha and no nightlies; the only way to run it is to clone the source and compile it yourself. The roadmap targets an Alpha in 2026 for Linux and macOS, with Windows later and Android and iOS only once the desktop versions are solid. So this is not "install it and see" — it is "know that this is happening".
It earns an entry because of the shape of the market. Three engines remain: Chromium, WebKit and Gecko, and the share held by the latter two shrinks every year. Web standards are drifting toward "whatever Chromium implemented". Ladybird is the only serious from-scratch engine effort in over a decade, run by a non-profit with no advertising business and no incentive to sell a default search slot — a very different position from Firefox taking hundreds of millions from Google for exactly that.
Progress during 2026 includes file downloads, browsing history, sandboxing by default, and migrating the codebase to Rust.
To be clear about:
- It cannot be your daily browser, and will not be for a while. For a clean everyday browser, look at LibreWolf, Zen or Mullvad Browser.
- It is listed because it meets the hard criteria — free, no ads, no tracking, no account — and because it is the only structural variable in this category. Read its maturity as pre-alpha.