Chrome has developed a reputation for being a memory hog, but is it deserved?

If you have spent any time on the internet, you have probably come across the "fact" that Chrome is a RAM hog. However, this isn't a fact so much as it is an internet meme. It has more to do with jokes about browsing and less to do with actual data, same as the claim that Microsoft Edge is slow and out of date. Both have been repeated so often that they started to feel true.

This isn't to say that Chrome doesn't use as much RAM as it needs; it absolutely does. It just means that RAM usage isn't that much of an issue in 2026, nor was it that much of an issue back in 2016.

Websites, and the way we use them, have changed considerably since the early days of the internet. Browsing the web used to be about moving from one text-heavy page to another, with occasional photos or videos sprinkled in. Websites today more closely resemble apps than simple web pages. Each holds more information and allows for a much more versatile browsing experience, while the browser itself is expected to hold multiple tabs at once while also running several extensions in the background.

All of those features together add up, and they are all expected to load instantly and run smoothly. That means the creators of the browser need to make a decision: share memory and processes across tabs to save RAM, or give each tab and site its own process, which costs more memory but keeps things fast and stable.

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