The Best Browsers for Android (That Aren’t Chrome)

Vivaldi is a fast and stable browser with desktop-style tabs that are perfect for those with large phones. With this app, you get a scrolling tab bar featuring full titles. No need to tap a button to switch to different tabs or manage them.

Vivaldi’s horizontally scrolling list of tabs is enabled by default, but you can turn it off if you wish. And like most Android browsers, you can choose to keep the tab bar at either the top or the bottom of the screen. Vivaldi also supports this tab layout on larger screens, so if you’re using an Android tablet, or a foldable, this might be the right browser for you.

Vivaldi’s Android browser syncs with its desktop counterpart, too, and like the desktop app, it offers ad-blocking and tracker-blocking options by default. You also get speed dial (which lets you access your favorite websites from the home page), search engine shortcuts, reading lists and themes.

Other than that, Vivaldi is quite light, and the interface is also easy to use. There is no AI agent here, no free VPN, and no news feed that you need to disable.

Firefox is the only browser on this list that supports extensions. This instantly makes Firefox the best pick with it comes to customization.

The Firefox app for Android is quite capable by itself, though. It’s fast, simple, and the easy to use. And using Firefox Sync, you can also access all your Firefox tabs (or tabs from any other Firefox-based browser) on your Android smartphone. The same goes for passwords too.

Additionally, Firefox features Collections, which is its own feature for manually grouping tabs in the tab switcher. The tab bar supports a convenient gesture, where you can swipe left or right to switch between recently used tabs (like how you swipe between apps using the Home bar).

As for those extensions, here are some of my favorites. The Dark Reader extension will enable dark mode for any website, uBlock Origin will give you a fast and efficient ad blocker, and Bitwarden’s extension autofills passwords for you. There are also extensions for tracking prices online or automatically blocking cookie pop-ups— really, the sky’s the limit as to what you can do with the right knowhow.

Brave is known for its privacy and security, and the Android browser is no different. Brave is faster compared to Chrome, and blocks ads and trackers by default, so there’s no need to enable a setting or download an extension for it. By default, Brave also uses its own Brave search engine, which focuses on privacy and does not use the Google search index.

Brave offers a lot of other features, too, but they are all disabled by default. For instance, you can enable a private news feed. And while Brave has its own AI bot (Leo) and its own paid VPN, both are tucked away in the settings and are easy to ignore.

There’s also an experimental Night mode that will automatically invert the colors on all websites for you, giving them a dark background and light text. Plus, Brave also features group tabs, for easier tab management.

Via is a minimalist and light browser, designed to run well on any Android device. It’ll only cost you 1.5 MB of storage, making it ideal for devices with limited storage. It also works well on devices with limited amounts of RAM.

You should expect a barebones experience here. Via opens to a minimal start page, and there are no news feeds or shortcuts available. It does have a simple tab management feature, and the tab bar can be found at the bottom of the screen.

The app has built-in ad blocking, and there’s an option to edit and customize the ad blocking filters as well. There is a reader mode, too, and even a night mode that inverts the colors on all websites.

Overall, if you’re tired of Chrome’s bloat, or if you have an older device where Chrome just drags on it way too much, Via is the browser for you.

Opera for Android is all about features. There’s a built-in reader mode, an ad-blocker that’s enabled by default, a free VPN service, and a customizable address bar that you can dock to the bottom of the screen.

By default, Opera puts its Arai AI front and center, reserving a slot for it in the toolbar. But you can easily edit it out.

And just like on Vivaldi, there’s an option to enable desktop style tabs that you can swipe through (though they’re not quite as big). There’s support for tab islands, too, where Opera automatically groups and color codes multiple web pages from the same site for you. When you go into the tab switcher, you’ll also find three different layout options: Carousel, Grid, and List. The latter two are self explanatory, but the Carousel option lets you quickly scroll between open tab groups and tabs. You are free to drag and drop tabs between the groups to rearrange them.

If you also use Opera on desktop, the tabs from your computer can sync with Android, and you can use the Flow feature to share links, files and notes between all your devices.