Mozilla Firefox

An independent web browser with its own rendering engine, funded almost entirely by search placement deals.

As of 30 August 2026, Mozilla Firefox is free to use. Firefox is the only significant browser not built on Chromium, and the only one that still supports the extension API full-strength content blockers need. Softwr lists it under Technology. Mozilla Firefox is made by Mozilla Foundation, launched in 2004, available on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS.

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Overview

What Mozilla Firefox does

Firefox is a web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and published under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. It uses Gecko, its own rendering engine, rather than Chromium's Blink, and ships for Windows, macOS and Linux, plus Android. On iOS and iPadOS, Apple's platform rules mean Firefox is a shell around WebKit, so the engine there is Safari's. An Extended Support Release track exists for organisations that need a version that changes roughly yearly instead of every four weeks. The distinguishing fact is engine independence and what follows from it. Because Firefox is not downstream of Chromium, Mozilla decides its own extension policy, and it has kept the blocking webRequest API that Chrome removed under Manifest V3. That is why uBlock Origin still works at full strength on Firefox and does not on Chrome, and it is the single most common reason technical users keep it installed. Engine independence also means Firefox is the only remaining check on Chromium becoming the de facto specification for the web, which matters to anyone whose business depends on the web being a standard rather than a product. The people who choose it deliberately are privacy-conscious individuals, web developers who need a second engine to test against, and public sector or research organisations with a policy preference for open source. The trade-off is structural rather than technical. Around 85 per cent of Mozilla's revenue comes from search default placement, overwhelmingly from Google, so the main competitor to Chrome is funded by Chrome's owner and any change to that arrangement lands directly on Firefox's engineering headcount. At two to three per cent of desktop share, you are also a rounding error to most site owners, so when a site breaks in Firefox the fix is usually your workaround, not their patch.

What people use it for

Web development where you need to test against a non-Chromium engine before shipping, because Chromium-only testing hides real bugs
Users who require a full-strength content blocker, which Chrome's Manifest V3 no longer permits
Managed fleets that need a browser on a slow release cadence with Group Policy control, using the ESR channel
Handling several accounts on the same service at once through container tabs, without separate profiles or private windows

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 Mozilla Firefox.

Roughly 85 per cent of Mozilla's revenue comes from search default placement deals, overwhelmingly with Google, so the organisation that competes with Chrome depends on Chrome's owner for its funding and any renegotiation lands on Firefox's engineering budget within a quarter.
Desktop market share sits at a few per cent, so commercial sites are tested against Chrome and Safari and a Firefox-only rendering or WebRTC bug is triaged as low priority by the site owner, leaving you with the workaround.
On iOS and iPadOS the browser is a WebKit shell required by Apple's rules, so it delivers the interface and Sync but none of the engine, extension or tracking-protection behaviour that make Firefox worth choosing on desktop.
Mozilla declines to implement several hardware-facing APIs on principle, including WebUSB, WebSerial, Web Bluetooth and WebHID, so a web application that talks to a device simply does not run and no configuration flag changes that.
Enterprise management is limited to policies.json and ADMX templates; there is no first-party equivalent of Chrome Browser Cloud Management, so fleet-wide reporting on versions and extensions requires third-party tooling you have to buy or build.
Mozilla repeatedly ships decisions its own user base objects to, such as enabling Privacy Preserving Attribution by default and the 2025 Terms of Use rewrite, and reversals arrive after the news cycle, so deploying it on a privacy argument means owning the communications work each time.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Mozilla Firefox

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.

Mozilla Firefoxvs
Safari
Safari: The best way to experience the internet on all your Apple devices
Mozilla Firefoxvs
Google Chrome
Google Chrome: Fast, secure browser built for the modern web
Mozilla Firefoxvs
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge: The only browser optimized for superior performance on Windows
Mozilla Firefoxvs
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook: Email, calendars and contacts in one place, on desktop, mobile and web

Capabilities

Features

Gecko engine
Renders with Mozilla's own engine rather than Chromium, giving a genuinely independent second implementation
Full webRequest blocking
Retains the extension API that Chrome removed, so uBlock Origin and similar blockers run unrestricted
Total Cookie Protection
Confines cookies to the site that set them, breaking cross-site tracking by default
Container tabs
Isolates cookies and storage per named container so multiple accounts or work and personal identities stay separate
Extended Support Release
A yearly-cadence build with policy templates, aimed at managed fleets that cannot absorb four-week releases
policies.json and ADMX
Enterprise configuration through a JSON file or Windows Group Policy templates
Built-in developer tools
Includes a CSS grid and flexbox inspector and an accessibility panel that Chromium's tools do not match
Firefox Sync
End-to-end encrypted sync of tabs, history, passwords and bookmarks across devices

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.

Does uBlock Origin still work on Firefox?

Yes. Firefox has kept the blocking webRequest API that Chrome removed with Manifest V3, so uBlock Origin runs with its full rule set rather than the cut-down Lite version Chrome requires.

Is Firefox on iPhone the same browser?

No. Apple's platform rules require it to use WebKit, so on iOS and iPadOS you get Firefox's interface, Sync and bookmarks on top of Safari's engine. The privacy and extension behaviour are not the same.

How is Mozilla funded, and does that matter?

Mainly by payments for making a search engine the default, with Google as the dominant payer. It matters because it is a single-source dependency on a direct competitor, and it has been the subject of antitrust litigation whose outcome Mozilla does not control.

Can I manage it across a company fleet?

Yes, through policies.json or Windows Group Policy with the ADMX templates, and the ESR channel gives you a roughly yearly major version instead of four-weekly. There is no first-party cloud management console, so reporting needs other tooling.

Will every site work in it?

Most will. The exceptions cluster around sites tested only in Chrome, legacy enterprise applications, and anything using WebUSB, WebSerial, Web Bluetooth or WebHID, which Firefox does not implement at all.

Behind it

Who makes Mozilla Firefox

Company: Mozilla Foundation
Based in: Mountain View, CA

Keep looking

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Mozilla Firefox, 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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