Even since Microsoft released Edge based on Chromium, the company has been quick at adding new features to the default Windows browser. But how does it compare to the market leader, Google Chrome? Web browsers play a crucial role in our workflow. Picking the ideal web browser depends on several factors and your preferences. Let’s compare both browsers and see if it’s worth switching from Chrome to Edge or vice versa on your mobile and laptop.

Cross-platform availability

Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge have native apps on all the major platforms, such as iOS, iPadOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux. That said, Google Chrome has a slight edge (no pun intended) here. Unlike Microsoft Edge, it’s available on ChromeOS, too.

Technically, you can install Microsoft Edge on a Chromebook, but the end-user experience isn’t ideal.

User interface and themes

Following the latest trend in the market, both Chrome and Edge have adopted a rounded UI throughout the browser. While they offer a lot of customization options, the out-of-box experience is much better on Chrome than on Edge.

Microsoft Edge displays quick links, a busy sidebar, location, temperature, news feed and a Bing wallpaper. Thankfully, you can turn off unnecessary elements, but it does require spending some time in Edge Settings, which is not an ideal user experience in our books.

You can also create a custom layout using the top menu. You can remove all the unnecessary elements from the home page, except for the Bing-powered search bar in the middle.

Google Chrome recently received a Material You makeover on the desktop. It looks modern and matches well with other Workspace apps like Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail, and more.

You can also customize Chrome and Edge using third-party themes from the Chrome Web Store. Edge is a step ahead with a dedicated themes menu in the Edge Add-ons section. Here, you'll find themes based on popular titles like Minecraft, Halo, Starfield and more.

Tabs management

Tabs management becomes crucial when dealing with dozens of tabs on a desktop browser. Both Chrome and Edge let you pin important tabs and group relevant ones to clean up the clutter. You can simply select tabs and organize them under a single group for better management.

When you select tabs and add them to a group, Edge auto-assigns a name based on your selected tabs. It also offers vertical tabs, which some may find useful on their ultrawide monitors.

Password manager

While Google Chrome and Edge support major third-party password managers via web extensions, they offer basic password management, too. You can save your login info, add notes, and even glance over your leaked, reused, or weak passwords. You can also set them as the default password manager on iOS and Android.

Google Chrome vs. Microsoft Edge: Features

As mentioned, both desktop browsers are feature-packed. Let's go over some of the noteworthy ones.

AI integration

Microsoft has integrated the Copilot AI bot in Edge. While you can access Copilot on any web browser, the software giant offers a direct one-click shortcut at the top and homepage. It opens the ChatGPT-powered bot in a neat sidebar and doesn’t take up the entire screen.

Copilot also works well with your web text editor. You can select a paragraph and choose to rewrite it using the AI chatbot. It's a hit-and-miss in its current avatar, though. We expect it to get better over the time.

Google doesn't offer any similar solution with Gemini, though. But since the search giant is getting serious with its AI bot, expect to see a better Gemini integration in Chrome soon.

Collections

Collections on Microsoft Edge offer a great helping hand during long research. It is basically your group bookmarks on steroids. You can create a collection of related web pages and even add a note for your research. It’s quite helpful during research to keep relevant tabs and notes in a single place.

On Chrome, you are basically stuck with tab groups or bookmark folders to organize weblinks.

Reading mode

The built-in reader mode in Microsoft Edge removes clutter to deliver a better reading experience. You can change text preferences and enable read aloud to listen to a webpage.

In contrast, Chrome's reader mode is quite average. It opens a reader mode in sidebar with several editing tools at the top to customize the experience.

Sidebar menu with useful tools

Microsoft Edge offers a sidebar that houses several tools to improve your productivity. For instance, the tools menu includes Calculator, Unit converter, Translator, World Clock, and other tools.

Microsoft Drop is another useful add-on worth talking about. You can share photos, files, screenshots and more with a single click and access them via Edge on other devices. Microsoft Drop uses OneDrive to sync files between devices.

Quick access to company apps

While Chrome offers one-click access to Google apps like Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets and more, Edge has the same shortcuts for Microsoft's apps. Depending on your preference, you may find them useful in your workflow.

Instant conversion and translation

You can use Chrome's address bar as a calculator, currency converter and even translate words in your preferred language. For instance, when you type $1000 to euro, the address bar shows the final value instantly.

With Microsoft Edge, you can only run basic math formulas in the address bar. It doesn't support currency converter or live translation.

Apart from these, both browsers support Chrome Web Store to use third-party extensions, multiple profiles, real-time data syncing, instant calculations via address bar and more.

Security and privacy

Google Chrome offers standard protection that shields you from dangerous sites, downloads and extensions. Microsoft Edge edges out Chrome with a default Balanced tracking prevention setting. It blocks harmful trackers from sites you haven’t visited, and ads will likely be less personalized. You can tweak tracking prevention to Strict or Basic from Edge Settings.

Microsoft Edge also offers a browser essentials menu to save power with efficiency mode, check tabs performance and glance over browsing protection in the last 30 days.

Performance

If you are a casual user, you shouldn’t find any major differences between Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on a high-speed internet connection. Avast recently did a speed comparison between major browsers, where Edge beat Chrome by small margins.

Google Chrome also has a reputation for heavy memory consumption. We opened five identical tabs on Edge and Chrome and launched Windows Task Manager to check memory consumption. Chrome used around 1.7GB, while Edge only consumed 1.1GB RAM.

A word on mobile apps

Chrome and Edge offer feature-packed mobile apps on Android and iPhone. Google Chrome has a better UI and widgets with Material You on Android and it even offers lock screen widgets on iPhone. Edge lags behind with an outdated look and lack of lock screen widgets on iPhone.

Google Chrome’s mobile apps aren’t consistent, though. While it uses the bottom menu for navigating relevant options on iOS, the Android app still has the address bar and other options at the top, which is very annoying on tall and big phones.

Pick a better companion to browse the web

Choosing between Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge doesn’t require rocket science. While Microsoft Edge offers superior tracking prevention, excellent tab management, performance and a neat Copilot integration, Google Chrome works better with Google Workspace apps, has a finer UI and a superior Google Translate tool.

If you plan to ditch Google Chrome in favor of Microsoft Edge, make sure to export your bookmarks. After all, you won’t want to set up everything from scratch on Microsoft Edge.