Safarivs
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox: Fast, private & safe web browser
Safari
Apple's WebKit browser, available only on Apple operating systems and updated only with them.
As of 30 August 2026, Safari is free to use. Safari is the default browser across Apple's platforms and is tightly tuned for battery life and hardware integration. Softwr lists it under Technology.
Overview
What Safari does
Safari is Apple's web browser, built on WebKit and shipped as part of macOS, iOS, iPadOS and visionOS. It is not distributed for any non-Apple platform: the last Windows release was Safari 5.1.7 in 2012, and there has never been a Linux or Android version. Safari versions are tied to the operating system release, so major browser features arrive with the annual OS update, and a Mac that can no longer run a supported macOS stops receiving Safari updates entirely. Intelligent Tracking Prevention, iCloud Keychain and, for iCloud+ subscribers, Private Relay are the main privacy features. What distinguishes it is that Apple controls both the browser and the silicon underneath it, and optimises the pair together. On Apple laptops, Safari's power consumption during ordinary browsing and video playback is measurably lower than Chromium browsers on the same machine, which translates into hours of battery rather than percentage points. Combined with Handoff, iCloud Tab sync, Apple Pay in the browser and passkeys backed by the Secure Enclave, it is the browser that makes an all-Apple estate behave as one device, and the switching cost is proportional to how much of that estate you have. It is used, rather than bought, by anyone standardised on Apple hardware, and it is a mandatory concern for every web team regardless of what they use themselves, because Safari sets the compatibility floor for the mobile web. The trade-off is asymmetric: individual users pay very little for it, while organisations pay in tooling. Testing Safari means owning or renting Macs, since safaridriver runs on macOS only and has no headless mode, and building a Safari extension means shipping a signed macOS application through the App Store with a paid developer account, which is a disproportionate amount of process for a small internal tool.
What people use it for
- Getting the longest battery life out of a MacBook, where the difference against Chromium browsers is hours rather than minutes
- Debugging a site on a real iPhone or iPad, which requires Safari's Web Inspector connected over USB from a Mac
- An all-Apple household or team that wants tabs, passwords and passkeys to follow them across devices without a third-party account
- Privacy-conscious users on iCloud+ who want tracking protection and Private Relay working by default rather than through extensions
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Safari.
- It runs only on Apple operating systems; there has been no Windows build since 2012 and none for Linux or Android, so any team that must verify Safari behaviour has to buy Mac hardware or rent it from a device cloud, which is a line item Chrome and Firefox do not create.
- Safari's version is bound to the operating system's version, so a Mac that has fallen off the supported macOS list stops receiving Safari updates altogether; the browser's security life is the machine's OS life, roughly three years of updates after the last major release it can run.
- Distributing an extension means packaging it inside a signed macOS application and shipping it through the App Store with a paid Apple Developer Program membership, which makes a small internal or single-team extension impractical.
- Automated testing uses safaridriver, which runs on macOS only, has no headless mode and permits one session per machine, so Safari coverage in CI means real Macs in the pipeline rather than containers, and it does not parallelise the way Chromium does.
- Web platform features generally land in WebKit later than in Blink and Gecko, so Safari's current support is in practice the compatibility floor for any project, and a feature you can use everywhere else may be a year away here.
- Enterprise management is thin: configuration profiles cover a modest set of settings with nothing comparable to the several hundred administrative policies Chrome and Edge expose, so a managed fleet cannot control Safari to the same degree.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Safari
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- SafarivsGoogle Chrome
Google Chrome: Fast, secure browser built for the modern web
- SafarivsMicrosoft Edge
Microsoft Edge: The only browser optimized for superior performance on Windows
- SafarivsMicrosoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook: Email, calendars and contacts in one place, on desktop, mobile and web
Capabilities
Features
WebKit engine
Apple's own rendering engine, the third significant engine alongside Blink and Gecko
Intelligent Tracking Prevention
Partitions and expires cross-site cookies and storage to limit tracking without an extension
Energy optimisation
Tuned against Apple silicon for lower power draw during browsing and video than Chromium browsers on the same hardware
iCloud Private Relay
For iCloud+ subscribers, routes Safari traffic through two relays so neither sees both the user and the destination
Passkeys in iCloud Keychain
Creates and syncs passkeys backed by the Secure Enclave across Apple devices
Handoff and tab sync
Pass an open page between Mac, iPhone and iPad, with iCloud Tabs listing what is open elsewhere
Profiles and Tab Groups
Separate cookies, history and extensions per profile, with shareable named collections of tabs
Web Inspector
Built-in developer tools, and the only way to debug pages running on a real iPhone or iPad
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Can I run Safari on Windows or Linux?
No. The last Windows version was Safari 5.1.7 in 2012 and it is long unsupported. There has never been a Linux build. Testing Safari requires macOS, either your own or a rented cloud device.
How do I test my site in Safari without a Mac?
Through a cloud device farm such as BrowserStack, Sauce Labs or LambdaTest, which run real macOS and iOS instances. There is no reliable local emulation, because other browsers on Windows and Linux do not use WebKit.
Are other iPhone browsers really different from Safari?
Historically no: Apple required all iOS browsers to use WebKit, so Chrome and Firefox on iPhone were interface shells around Safari's engine. The EU's Digital Markets Act now permits alternative engines, but adoption is limited, so in practice iOS testing still means WebKit.
Why does Safari not get a new version on my old Mac?
Safari ships with the operating system. When a Mac can no longer run a macOS version that Apple still updates, Safari stops updating too, including its security fixes.
What does it cost?
Nothing. It is included with Apple operating systems. Private Relay requires an iCloud+ subscription, and publishing an extension requires a paid Apple Developer Program membership.
Keep looking
Where to go from Safari
- Safari alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Safari pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Safari badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Technology softwareThe full category
- Best Technology softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Technology software for
Compare Safari with
- Microsoft Edge
- Mozilla Firefox
- Google Chrome
- Trino
- Apache Spark
- GitHub Desktop
- ClickUp
- Intercom
- Monday.com
- Maze
- PyCharm
- MongoDB
- Nagios XI
- Postgres
- Shortcut
- Site24x7
- Microsoft Outlook
- MongoDB Atlas
Other Technology software
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Free plan12 researched notesA distributed SQL engine that queries data where it already lives, across object storage, warehouses and operational databases.
Free plan15 researched notesA distributed engine for batch, SQL, streaming and machine learning workloads over data that does not fit on one machine.
Free plan15 researched notesA free, open source Git client from GitHub for Windows and macOS that covers common workflows rather than all of Git.
Free plan16 researched notesEnterprise-grade monitoring solution with advanced visualization and reporting
Free plan11 researched notesProject management for software teams
Free, then $8.5/user/month (billed annually)11 researched notesMicrosoft's email and calendar client, in the middle of a transition from the classic Windows application to a web-based replacement.
Free, then $1.99/mo15 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Safari, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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