“My website isn’t working in Safari”—a classic conversation with a client. Let’s take a look at which browsers people are actually using in 2026, which ones websites are built for, and which ones you no longer need to test—and what that means for your budget.
Browser Market Share in 2026
The numbers vary depending on who is doing the counting: StatCounter measures page views, while other services measure sessions or devices. Therefore, focus on the order of magnitude rather than the decimal places.
| Browser | Global share | Where is the strength? |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome | 65–69% | Everywhere: Android, Windows, macOS |
| Safari | 16–18% | Mobile: about a quarter of the phone market, because it's the only processor in the iPhone |
| Edge | about 5% | Windows desktop—there are over 10% |
| Firefox | 2–3% | Desktop, an audience that values privacy |
| Opera | about 2% | Specific markets, particularly Eastern Europe |
| Samsung Internet | about 2% | Samsung phones "out of the box" |
Key points from this table: There are actually two engines. Chrome, Edge, Opera, Samsung Internet, and Brave are all based on Chromium, so they behave almost identically. Safari, with its WebKit engine, stands apart—and it’s the one responsible for most of the “this only happens to me” cases. Firefox uses a third engine, but due to its small market share, it rarely influences our decisions.
What does this mean in practice?
You need to test the website in two environments: Chromium and Safari. Testing on five desktop browsers is a waste of time if none of them are on an iPhone. And testing on an iPhone is a must: in Ukraine, Apple accounts for a significant share of mobile traffic, and that’s where non-standard elements most often break.
What is no longer supported
- Internet Explorer — Microsoft discontinued it in 2022. There’s no point in building a website for it in 2026: it would double the layout budget for an audience that doesn’t exist.
- Edge on the old engine (until 2020) — replaced by the Chromium version.
- Old Android browsers On systems up to version 8—they do occur, but they account for only a fraction of a percent.
- Opera Mini in power-saving mode — The page passes through Opera's servers and is simplified, so complex layouts won't work there anyway.
If your analytics show a significant percentage of these browsers, they are almost always bots, not people.
What Websites Are Writing About These Days
The industry has shifted from a list of browsers to an approach Baseline: For each feature of the web platform, it is indicated whether it works in the latest versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. If it does, you can use it without any workarounds.
A rule of thumb for a commercial website in 2026:
- the two most recent versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari on desktop;
- the current and previous versions of Safari on iOS;
- The current version of Chrome for Android.
This set covers more than 95% real visitors. Anyone not included in this list will see the site—just without the special effects—and that’s normal: this approach is called “progressive enhancement.”
What to Check Before Starting Up
- An iPhone, not an emulator. Mobile device mode in Chrome shows the dimensions, but not the behavior of Safari.
- Forms. Safari displays date fields, file selection fields, and autofill fields differently.
- Videos and animations. There are restrictions on auto-start on iOS.
- Fonts and scrolling. This is where the most common minor discrepancies occur.
- Touch buttons. The hover effect doesn't work on a phone—even if the "hovered" state makes sense, it's lost on a touchscreen. We were taking apart, how applications get rejected because of such minor details.
How much does it cost to support "unnecessary" browsers?
Each additional browser in the list represents a separate cycle of testing and revisions. Support for Internet Explorer used to add up to 30% to the cost of layout. Today, it’s a similar story—the requirement that “it must work on the old Android 6”: technically possible, but the price goes up, and it doesn’t bring in any more visitors.
A smart approach: check your website’s analytics to see which browsers people are actually using, and test your site accordingly. If you don’t have analytics yet, setting it up is the first thing you should do: without data, any discussion about browser support turns into a matter of personal preference.
Conclusion
In 2026, you only need to keep two rendering engines in mind: Chromium and WebKit. Internet Explorer is dead, old Android browsers are statistically nonexistent, and the rest of the issues are handled by the “two latest versions of the major browsers” rule. Everything else is money wasted on an audience that doesn’t exist.
We We develop turnkey websites and we test them on actual devices, not just in an emulator—specifically on the iPhone, where crashes occur most often. Calculate the cost You can create your own project in three steps.
Sources of the figures: StatCounter for August 2026 and aggregated data from analytical services; the Baseline approach is described at web.dev. The percentages change every month—be sure to check the current ones.
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