Opera GX vs Chrome – Which is the Best Browser in 2024

Chrome might be the most used browser, but Opera GX is growing in popularity due to its gaming features and optimized performance. I put Opera GX vs Chrome in a head-to-head battle to see which comes out on top in 2024.

Opera GX vs Chrome – Features

Chrome is a great all-rounder and Opera GX brings many new features to the table, but how do they compare?

Privacy and Security

Like the standard Opera browser, Opera GX takes privacy and security very seriously. It offers private browsing and a built-in ad blocker that stops popups, display ads, and trackers.

It also prevents third parties from collecting data about your online behavior via tracking cookies and browser fingerprinting.

Opera GX’s standout privacy feature is the free built-in VPN, which hides your internet activity and location by encrypting your connection and assigning a different IP. This provides a high level of anonymity. 

While Chrome certainly has a standard level of privacy and security features like most popular browsers, it falls at the first hurdle for those concerned over data collection.

It sends data about browsing habits, such as URLs visited and search queries back to Google. Even Incognito mode has been called into question.

You can manage cookies, targeted ads, and site-level settings, but by default, it doesn’t stop anything other than popups and dangerous phishing or malware sites.

Winner: Opera GX

Synchronization

Cross-device syncing lets you pick up where you left off on your last device. When you sign in to your Opera GX account on multiple devices, your bookmarks, Flow, Speed Dial entries, browsing history, passwords, settings, wallet, and open tabs can be synced automatically.

Likewise, Chrome also syncs your Google account regardless of device. You can choose which data types to sync, including bookmarks, history, passwords, settings, open tabs, Gmail, and payment info.

If you rely heavily on Google services and want to sync more types of data, Chrome may be a better choice, but there isn’t a significant difference.

Winner: Draw

AI Assistants

Like the standard Opera browser, Opera GX includes a powerful AI assistant called Aria AI. While browsing you can request page summaries, get answers from the chatbot, and compose content like messaging responses or blog posts.

Ironically, it uses Google’s own Imagen2 model to offer 30 free AI image generations per day.

Chrome itself is still rolling out its experimental AI features and you need to download the BETA version before it shows up in Chrome.

It functions in much the same way, offering a chatbot to answer questions, the ability to explore and summarize pages, and a help me write feature to compose content.

It also comes with Google Lens to find visual matches for images you upload.

However, while you can generate custom themes, you can’t currently generate images like Aria AI.

Opera GX also comes with RGX Mode. This includes an AI-style video enhancer that essentially upscales, sharpens, and removes artifacts from any video you play in real time.

While I found results aren’t always perfect, it’s an ambitious feature that shows a lot of promise.

Winner: Opera GX

Tab Management

If you open lots of tabs, the ability to organize them is important for an efficient browsing experience.

Opera GX supports horizontal and vertical tab bars. You can group them together via drag-and-drop. You can also pin important tabs to keep them visible when the tab bar is full.

It also offers a thumbnail view by clicking the tab menu icon to see a list of all open tabs as larger tiles.

What stands out the most is the Hot Tabs Killer feature. It identifies which tabs are using the most CPU or RAM, and you can quickly close them to stop the browser hogging resources.

Chrome’s tabs are horizontal by default, but you can make them vertical with an extension. It also supports pinning and grouping, to which you can assign a name and color. If you have a lot of tabs open, tab search lets you find a specific tab by name.

Both browsers have enough options for effective tab management, but Opera GX is a bit more flexible. I prefer the tile view, and the Hot Tabs Killer is useful for gaming and conserving system resources.

Winner: Opera GX

Extensions and Add-ons

Because Opera GX uses the Chromium engine, you still get access to all the same extensions as Chrome, except for a few exclusive integrations.

Nonetheless, Opera GX also has its own exclusive web store to expand functionality. A lot of these focus on gaming, such as:

• further Twitch integrations
• notifications on new game deals
• deeper system monitoring

However, I also found social media extensions, customizations, and more general extensions that mirror others found in the Chrome Web Store.

Furthermore, the GX Mods library can completely change the look and feel of your browser in a single click.

Obviously, Chrome itself has no shortage of extensions and you can find some similar resource limiters to Opera GX, but overall, GX has much more to play with.

Winner: Opera GX

Built-in Apps

Beyond Chrome Extensions, Chrome integrates well with other Google apps, especially if you use Google as your main web account.

You are automatically signed into Google Meet, Docs, Drive, etc. For example, Google Docs can be opened directly from Google Drive, without having to download them to your computer first. You can also save files to Google Drive directly from Chrome.

Other integrated services include Gmail, Calander, Photos, and Google Keep for creating and managing notes, images, and other saved content.

Opera GX has its own built-in app sidebar which includes messaging apps like Messenger, WhatsApp, and Discord by default. These aren’t just shortcuts; you can use them directly in the sidebar from anywhere on the web.

Other built-in features include:

GX Cleaner – This shortcut to browser cleaning can delete browsing history, cache, cookies, and close old tabs or remove old icons that haven’t been used in x number of days.

GX Control – This is where you control how much CPU, RAM, and network bandwidth the browser uses. The Hot Tabs Killer shows which tabs are using the most resources. The Network Limiter lets you limit how much of your download and upload speed can be used by the browser. Meanwhile, the RAM and CPU Limiters let you choose how much RAM and processing power the browser can use.

GX Player – The built-in Player app gives direct access to Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube Music and more. This allows you to play music from the sidebar rather than using separate apps.

Winner: Opera GX

Opera GX Speed Dial vs Chrome Most Visited

In Opera GX, you can manually add websites to the Speed Dial on the homepage. By default, you get shortcuts to CDKeys and some gaming sites, but it’s fully customizable. You can organize them into folders, and even customize the thumbnails.

A similar feature on Chrome is the most visited pages, which appear on the homepage under the search bar. You can remove these and add new ones but cannot change the icon or create folders.

Winner: Opera GX

Customization

Both browsers are customizable, allowing you to change their look, feel, and behavior. Chrome supports custom fonts and sizes, keyboard shortcuts, showing or hiding the bookmarks bar, and custom themes. Moreover, you can choose from different color schemes, including dark mode.

For the more tech-savvy, Chrome includes Dev Tools and several experimental settings that can be enabled or disabled by modifying browser flags. These are accessed by typing “chrome://flags” into the address bar. You can also customize the user interface by using CSS stylesheets.

Opera GX also covers all the bases when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, fonts, and showing or hiding the bookmarks and sidebar. Moreover, there are lots of custom themes and color schemes.

As a browser focused on gamers, you’ll find settings for animations, and lights, adding wallpapers, adding and removing widgets, and even background music.

Where the browser really shines is GX Mods. This lets you customize the appearance and behavior of the browser using JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. If you don’t know how to do this yourself, there is already a huge library of pre-made mods that you can install with a single click.

Overall, Chrome is certainly customizable, but Opera GX has so many options it can even become overwhelming.

Winner: Opera GX

Ease of Use and Interface

Opera GX and Chrome are user-friendly, and all their settings are easy to find and clearly explained.

I find Chrome to be more familiar and traditional in appearance, while GX is more visually engaging, with animations, optional RGB lighting effects, and a gamer vibe.

Despite that, its settings are often quicker to find. For example, clicking the slider settings icon immediately shows all its main appearance customization settings. On Chrome you must dig a little deeper.

Opera GX has more going on onscreen, due to its app sidebar. However, unless you like a minimalist look, it’s still intuitive to use and not a major factor regarding ease of use.

Ultimately, when it comes to their interfaces, it’s down to your individual tastes.

Winner: Draw

Resource Usage and Page Load Speed

Although Chrome leads the pack in popularity, it is known to be one of the most resource-intensive browsers, using multiple processes and consuming a lot of RAM.

In a standard test, opening 5 tabs and monitoring memory consumption in Windows Task Manager, it used between 1,750-1,800 MB of RAM.

This isn’t good if you want to game with the browser open or have a low-end PC.

Due to its built-in limiters, Opera GX consumes far less RAM and processing power and gives total control over how system resources are allocated. If you only want it to use 600MB of RAM, then it will never exceed this. This makes it a great Chrome alternative.

When it comes to browsing and page load speed, I turned to Speedometer 3.0 to benchmark performance. The higher the number, the faster the browser performs numerous in-browser tasks.

Officially, Chrome has been crowned the fastest with a score in the high 30s. On my system, it scored 24.9, while Opera GX scored 16.6.

Despite this, I personally didn’t find a noticeable difference between the two while browsing with open tabs, playing videos, and checking emails.

Winner resource usage	Winner page speed
Opera GX	Chrome

Opera GX vs Chrome – Head-to-head Comparison

Now we know the key features of Opera GX vs Chrome and where they excel, let’s give a head-to-head recap:

	Opera GX	Chrome
Ease of Use	4/5	4/5
RAM Usage	User-Defined	1,750-1,800 MB
Page Speed	4/5	5/5
Privacy and Security	5/5	3/5
Extensions	Chromium + Opera Store + GX Mods	Google Web Store
AI Assistant	Supports Text-to-image and Video Enhancer	Chatbot and Google Lens
Customization	4/5	3.5/5
Overall Features	VPN, in-browser apps, full control over system resources	Better for integration with other Google apps

Opera GX vs Chrome – Verdict

If you are a gamer or need to conserve system resources, Opera GX is a clear winner over Chrome. It also has better privacy and security features, and the sidebar apps offer a much more efficient experience than Chrome.

Nonetheless, if regular browsing is your thing and you have a modern PC that has plenty of RAM, Chrome performs excellently and has better in-browser speed benchmarks. If you use the Google ecosystem heavily, then it makes more sense to choose Chrome.

When looking at Opera GX vs Chrome head-to-head, Opera GX offers more, but Chrome certainly has its place when gaming is not your concern.

Which browser do you prefer? Let me know in the comments below!