22 Interesting Browser Statistics for 2022

Web browsers. You can think of them as picture frames for the world’s largest canvas: the internet. The online world, the whole endless-terabytes circus of it, happens inside that humble frame.

But, like frames, browsers are easy to overlook. You're focused on the content they bring, after all. Still, browser statistics show that over four billion users online use a browser to access the internet. This makes browsers the most widely-used applications in the world.

Browser market share statistics

1. 63.7% of people across all platforms use Chrome for browsing the internet.

(StatCounter)

According to StatCounter, the global browser market share in 2019 looks like this: Google Chrome has a firm lead with over 60% of users, followed by Apple’s Safari with 16.3% and Firefox with 4.5%. Samsung’s browser has 3.3% while UC browser has 3.1%.

In North America, things are a little bit different. When it comes to Mexican, Canadian and US browser statistics, the leader is still Chrome, whose market share is 53.6%. The Safari market share is just over a third at 30.4% and Firefox has 4.3%. Interestingly, Microsoft’s Edge (3.83%) and Explorer (3.29%) browsers are ahead of Samsung’s.

2. Chrome is the browser of choice for 69.8% of desktop users.

(StatCounter)

When it comes to browser statistics on the desktop, Chrome is the prefered choice. Here we see an improvement for Mozilla, as Firefox market share of 9.5% beats Safari’s 7.4%. These are followed by Microsoft’s Edge and Explorer browsers. Explorer beats Edge browser’s market share, demonstrating that many people still prefer the older browser.

3. 62% of mobile users worldwide prefer Chrome.

(StatCounter)

Google Chrome is still first among the most popular mobile browsers. Roughly one in three users prefer Chrome and one in five use Safari. Browser statistics for mobile devices diverge from our other stats here. Firefox is nowhere to be seen and Samsung and UC Browser have a sizable market share with 6.5% and 5.8%, respectively. They are followed by Opera with 2.7%.

Industry giants Apple, Google and Samsung put their own products as the default browsers on their devices. Chrome is the default Android browser, Safari is the default IOS browser, and the Samsung Browser comes with all Samsung phones.

Browser usage statistics

4. There are around 4.5 billion internet users worldwide as of June 2019.

(Internet World Stats)

If we consider that around 7.5 billion people currently live on the planet, 60% of the world’s population is active on the internet. Of these active users, 50% come from Asia, while 727 million come from Europe and 523 from Africa. Latin America and the Caribbean have 453 million internet users, while North America has 328 million.

Web browser popularity varies by region, but Google is generally in the lead across the world.

5. 54.2% of browsers on the market use Windows 10 as their operating system.

(W3Schools)

Just as Google holds the majority of the browser usage share with Chrome, Microsoft dominates the OS market with various versions of Windows. Top web browsers in 2019 are mostly installed on Windows 10, while Windows 7 still holds an impressive 14.7% of the market share, considering that it’s a 10-year-old operating system. Windows 8 has 4.7%, giving Microsoft a total of 73.6% of the market. Mobile browsers take up 10.9% and MacOS, 9.5%. Linux has 6.2% and ChromeOS, a measly 0.2%.

6. The world’s oldest website turned 30 last year.

(History)

Although the internet itself is much older, its public consumption only came about following the creation of the World Wide Web. We wouldn’t have today’s website browser statistics without the man who started it all.

British scientist Tim Berners-Lee was responsible for everything web related that we use today: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), and more. His first website went public on August 6, 1991 and is still going strong today.

7. 67% of employees rely on browsers more than they did two years ago.

(Forrester)

According to Forrester’s browser statistics, the average employee spends 2.7 hours using a browser each day. In addition, 94% of respondents consider browser-based apps to be just as easy, if not easier to use than desktop apps. Browser usage statistics from 2018 show a trend of continuous growth.

8. 25.8% of internet users are blocking ads on their connected devices in 2019.

(Statista)

As internet traffic grows, so do the ambitions of marketers to reach bigger online audiences. With more and more ads flooding the internet on a daily basis, it’s becoming difficult to imagine web browser usage without ad blockers such as AdBlockPlus, uBlock Origin and AdGuard. Many popular websites depend on advertising revenue, so a lot of them have started locking content if they detect ad blocking activity. Personalized advertising is one of the solutions. Many people are willing to turn off ad blocking in order to see content they came to the site for.

9. Over 50% of internet users keep one to five browser tabs open while browsing.

(Digital Trends)

Chrome detractors often point out that the browser can be a performance hog. The reason for this is that each opened tab is treated as a separate process in the task manager. This is great when something goes wrong, but not so great for your CPU and RAM usage.

But over half of respondents never have more than five tabs open at a time. That being said, 26% said that they have between six and 15 tabs open. Digital Trends’ browser usage stats note that 13% of users have too many tabs open to count.

Browser security statistics

10. The Google Safe Browsing service protects over four billion users.

(Google)

Google’s service is aimed at providing a safe browsing environment. It detects unsafe websites and displays warnings when compromised sites are found. Sites can be infected by malware or phishing scams designed to steal user data. According to Google’s browser security statistics, the majority of infected websites are legitimate sites attacked by hackers, with only a small portion being dedicated attack sites.

11. There are around 35,000 phishing and 2,400 malware sites on the internet.

(Google)

According to Google’s web page statistics there are currently 35,701 phishing and 2,391 malware sites on the web. Phishing sites pose as legitimate websites in order to steal user data, while malware sites are infected websites that install various ransomware, spyware or viruses.

Malware statistics over the past ten years show that in June 2009 there were over 76,000 malware sites and around 12,000 phishing sites. Since then, hackers have been turning more towards phishing activities, and traditional attack sites are slowly dying out.

12. With 98% of threats detected, Edge is the best anti-phishing browser.

(CA Security Council)

Phishing sites currently represent the most common threat to internet browsers. Lookalikes outnumber certified domains 2:1, and browsing filters such as Google Safe Browsing and Microsoft Smart Screen cannot catch them all. Most popular Internet browsers are pretty good at finding phishing sites, but Microsoft's product is the quickest, and the most thorough. The browser is able to detect and block 89% of phishing sites immediately, 97% within two days and 98% in total.

If we compare Edge vs Chrome, the latter is capable of 79% instant detections, 95% detections within two days and 96% detections in total. Mozilla’s Firefox lags behind Edge and Chrome with 77% instant detections. It catches up to Chrome within two days, though, and has the same max detection percentage reached after three days (96%).

13. With 177 vulnerabilities detected, Chrome is the most vulnerable web browser in 2019.

(CVE Details)

Google’s open-source nature comes at a price; Chrome is the most vulnerable web browser out there. Android’s mobile browser is also proven to be problematic, with 414 detected vulnerabilities thus far in 2019.

If we compare Chrome vs Safari or Firefox vs Chrome, both of Google’s main competitors have Chrome significantly beat when it comes to security. Firefox has 105 detected vulnerabilities in 2019, and Safari has only 68. Microsoft’s Edge browser has detected 90 vulnerabilities in 2019 so far.

14. Around 80% of websites loaded by Firefox are secured through HTTPS.

(Let’s Encrypt)

As phishing becomes more and more prevalent, certification authorities are working harder than ever at encrypting websites. Encryption helps with both security and privacy, and free SSL/TLS certificates are becoming increasingly available for website owners. Firefox Telemetry, the metrics behind one of the most used web browsers on desktops, reports that currently 78.9% of websites visited worldwide, and 88% visited in the United States are encrypted. Compared to 28% five years ago, it’s clear that encryption has come a long way.

15. The largest data breach in history compromised three billion Yahoo accounts.

(Statista)

Yahoo has seen its fair share of attacks over the years. But the company’s two largest ones, dated all the way back to 2013, and 2014, were only discovered in October of 2017. Browser use statistics indicate that identity theft is the most common data breach, followed by unauthorized access to financial data.

16. The average cost of a corporate data breach is $3.92 million.

(IBM)

According to IBM, the cost has risen by 12% over the past five years. About $2.5 million was lost by companies with less than 500 employees, and the cost of an individual lost record is around $150. According to the survey, America has more than double the global data-breach losses with $8.19 million on average. The largest breaches happen in the health sector - an average of $6.5 million worldwide, 60% more than the other industries in the study.

17. Over 50% of browser-based cryptocurrency mining scripts come from the United States, India, Russia and Brazil.

(AdGuard)

Adguard’s website browser statistics show that the majority of crypto-mining scripts in the world originate from the United States (18.7%), India (13.4%), Russia (12.4%), and Brazil (8.1%). They are mostly hidden on free streaming websites (22.3%), torrent trackers (17.7%) and adult websites (10%).

Mobile browser statistics

18. 48.9% of global website traffic was generated through mobile phones in Q2 of 2019.

(Statista)

Mobile data traffic has accounted for around half of the global web traffic since the start of 2017. Web browser usage statistics vary around the globe. Due to financial restraints, countries like India, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria have a large mobile browser market share of more than 50%. Meanwhile, the United States still sees desktop computers generating the majority of website traffic (around 60%).

19. Chrome is the most popular mobile browser, hosting 62% of users worldwide.

(StatCounter)

When it comes to mobile browser usage statistics in 2019, Chrome has a sizeable lead worldwide. It is followed by Safari with 20.6% of users around the globe, and Samsung Internet Browser with 6.5%. UC Browser also ranks fairly highly with 5.8% and Opera is used by 2.7% of people. Mozilla is a complete non-factor on mobile phones worldwide, despite having a mobile version of Firefox available. It is somewhat present in Europe and North America, but it accounts for less than 1% of the user base in both markets.

20. With 52.3% of users, Safari is the most popular mobile browser in the United States.

(StatCounter)

According to mobile browser usage statistics in the US, 47% of users prefer Safari. Chrome comes in second with 45.3%, followed by Samsung with 5.6%. UC Browser, Firefox, and Opera combined account for only around 1.5% of the mobile internet browser market share  in the United States.

21. Samsung’s mobile browser has more than a billion downloads on the Google Play Store.

(Google Play Store)

Mobile browser popularity statistics show that Samsung’s mobile browser has more downloads than both Firefox and Opera combined. Moreover, browser stats show that the growing popularity of Samsung’s browser is due to more than just the fact that it acts as the default app on all of their devices.

22. 60% of organic search-engine visits were made on mobile devices in Q3 of 2019.

(Statista)

While mobile networks are generating the majority of internet traffic in India and many African countries, they account for only about 40% of the total internet traffic in the United States. However, US web browser statistics paint a different picture when it comes to search engines. Around two-thirds of all organic visits to search engines, such as Google Search, come from mobile devices. In 2013, on the other hand, people mostly used their web browser of choice on desktop computers while conducting web searches, while only 27% of total organic searches came from mobile devices. There was a slight dip in the fourth quarter of 2015, but otherwise mobile searches have been steadily gaining popularity each year.