Open-source Microsoft Edge alternatives

Ladybird is an independent web browser that uses a new engine based on web standards. The goal is a full-featured, practical browser that can handle today's web, but it is currently pre-alpha software that only developers should try. It is written in C++ and released under the BSD-2-Clause license.

Its architecture is multi-process: a main UI process alongside multiple WebContent renderers, an ImageDecoder process and a RequestServer process. Decoding images and making network requests both occur outside the main process to be more resilient against malicious content, and each tab has its own sandboxed renderer. Many core library components are currently inherited from SerenityOS, including LibWeb for rendering, LibJS for JavaScript, LibWasm for WebAssembly and LibGfx for 2D graphics.

Ladybird runs on Linux, macOS, Windows through WSL2 and several other platforms, with build instructions and code documentation in the repository. The community gathers on Discord, and the project has an issue policy and guidelines for reporting problems. It suits developers and browser-engine enthusiasts who want to follow or contribute to an independent engine.

Brave is a web browser built on Chromium and available for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS and Windows. This GitHub repository is not needed to build the browser: it holds only issues, releases and the wiki, while the source code and contributions live in the brave-core repository. Brave is released under the MPL-2.0 license, and the browser is also known for including ad and tracker blocking by default.

The repository's wiki provides documentation for developers, administrators and power users, and the Brave help center covers user-facing questions. A release schedule explains how versions are published, and a security policy describes how to report problems. The community has a Q&A forum, a guest channel on Slack and a Transifex project where people can contribute translations. The latest stable release is available from the Brave website.

Firefox is a web browser built by the non-profit Mozilla organization, and this is its official source repository. The project describes the browser as fast, reliable and private, and it competes with browsers from commercial vendors by being developed in the open under an organization that is not a company.

The repository is the starting point for contributors. Mozilla points developers to a Quick Reference for contributors, to the Firefox Source Docs as the primary documentation, and to Firefox Nightly for development builds. Bugs are filed on bugzilla.mozilla.org rather than in GitHub issues, and developer questions are handled on Matrix at chat.mozilla.org.

Most of the source is JavaScript, alongside lower-level code, and the code is distributed under Mozilla's open-source licenses, mainly the Mozilla Public License. Anyone can read and build the code, track development, or contribute fixes by following the documented workflow, while end users normally install released builds from the Firefox website.

Floorp is a free and open-source web browser based on Mozilla Firefox. The project describes its mission as keeping an open, private and sustainable web alive, and it builds on Firefox's Gecko engine for rendering pages.

The repository holds the source code for Floorp 12 and is written mostly in TypeScript. The project provides an official site with downloads, a blog with release notes, a Discord server and documentation. It is funded through sponsorship, including GitHub Sponsors, which helps cover development and server costs, and several companies are named as special sponsors.

Floorp is released under the MPL-2.0 licence, the same licence family used by Firefox. As a browser it is installed as a desktop application from the official download page, and the README lists the supported operating systems and getting-started steps for users.

Waterfox is a customizable web browser based on Mozilla Firefox. The official repository holds Mozilla platform code together with Waterfox's own product code, branding, features and packaging, plus release files, and it is built with the Mozilla build system using the usual mach entry points.

According to the project website, Waterfox focuses on privacy out of the box and on customization. It includes built-in ad blocking, private and anonymized DNS, and no telemetry or data collection, along with a variety of quality-of-life features. The site shows an interactive preview where you can choose a browser design, a color palette, light or dark mode and horizontal or vertical tabs, and offers downloads for Android, Linux, macOS and Windows.

Waterfox is free and open source, and development is supported by donations. Most Firefox development documentation still applies to its source tree, and the project provides a blog, changelog, help center and community channels.