Google Chrome vs Thorium in 2026

This is the same browser twice, assembled differently. Thorium takes the Chromium source that Chrome is built from and rebuilds it with settings tuned for modern processors, then publishes several versions rather than one. Google cannot do that: Chrome has to run on every machine in the world, including very old ones, so it cannot assume anything modern is in your computer. Thorium can, and the project measures the result at 8-38% faster than standard Chromium.

Speed you can measure, and what else comes with it

Both score 5 for speed in our ratings, which is the honest reading — Chrome is already fast, and Thorium's advantage is real but incremental rather than transformative. You will notice it on demanding pages and on newer hardware, and barely at all on light browsing.

Thorium also restores things Google removed or never enabled. Video and image formats Chrome refuses to play work here, old FTP links still open, and privacy settings Chrome leaves off are switched on from the start — Do Not Track, Global Privacy Control, and the ad-targeting features Google has been building into Chrome switched off. That is why Thorium scores 3 for privacy against Chrome's 2, the lowest privacy score in our directory.

The cost is upkeep

Chrome updates itself silently and ships security fixes the moment they are ready. Thorium follows a long-term-support version of Chromium that changes only twice a year, and you install and update it by hand from GitHub releases. Security fixes can reach you meaningfully later than they would on Chrome. It scores 3 for ease of use against Chrome's 4, and that gap is almost entirely about maintenance rather than the browsing experience.

There is a smaller consequence too: because that support base lags, Thorium does not yet have features Chrome shipped recently. Native vertical tabs arrived in Chrome 146 in 2026 and have not reached Thorium's base.

The rest is familiar. Both run the full Chrome Web Store and both score 4 for extensions. Both sync. Chrome covers all five major platforms; Thorium covers desktop plus Android and Raspberry Pi. Chrome now bundles Gemini into the browser itself — a side panel that reads your open tabs, plus agentic browsing on paid tiers — while Thorium adds nothing of the kind. That is a 5 against 1 in our AI ratings.

Which should you choose?

Choose Chrome. For nearly everyone the automatic security updates alone settle it, and you get the same rendering, the same extensions and the same speed rating without ever thinking about your browser.

Choose Thorium if you want the fastest possible Chromium, you have hardware new enough to benefit, and you are genuinely willing to check for updates yourself. It is a good piece of engineering aimed at people who care about the last few percent — but treat manual updating as the price of admission, not an inconvenience you can ignore.