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Just a place for me to keep track of contributed memory to web pages over time. I consider the contributed memory to web pages to be more important than the own memory footprint. Unfortunately it is not possible for a user to see how much memory overhead an extension contributes to a web page, without running a benchmark like the one here. Keep in mind the results here are only for one simple web page.

Using Acid Test 3, a rather simple web page, with embedded iframes. Web page was opened in a new tab for each extension (important), after a browser restart.

Each extension tested alone, with no other extension enabled. Browser left on idle for more than 1 minute to ensure web page memory was garbage collected.

The following steps were added for benchmarks dated December 2014 and later:

1. Click "Stats for nerds" in "Task Manager": "About memory" opens
2. Wait a few seconds
3. Close the "About memory" tab
4. Wait a few seconds
5. Repeat all above steps until the memory footprint of the Acid Test tab stops decreasing

I found this was now necessary as it appears Chromium's garbage collector has become rather lazy. The above steps forces it into action.

24 December 2014

• Chromium 39.0.2171.65 64-bit (Linux)
• uBlock 0.8.2.2 (default lists: EasyList, Peter Lowe’s Ad server, EasyPrivacy, malware domain lists, Fanboy’s Social Blocking List‎)
• Adblock Plus 1.8.8 (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware Protection List, "Acceptable ads" disabled)

Summary of results:

• Reference memory usage for the web page: 23 MB
• uBlock adds over 10 MB
• Adblock Plus adds over 33 MB
• Adblock Plus with same filter lists as uBlock adds over 46 MB

No extension (reference):

uBlock:

Adblock Plus:

Adblock Plus with same filter lists as uBlock:

19 September 2014

• Chromium 37.0.2062.94 64-bit (Linux)
• uBlock 0.6.2.1 (default filter lists)
• Adblock Plus 1.8.5 (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware Protection List, "Acceptable ads" disabled)

Summary of results:

• Reference memory usage for the web page: 22 MB
• uBlock Plus adds over 9 MB
• Adblock Plus adds over 32 MB

No extension (reference):

uBlock:

Adblock Plus:

Observations:

Last time I ran this benchmark was on Chromium 34 64-bit, and it does appear that Chromium 37 is causing web pages to consume more memory -- reference result went from ~17 MB to ~22 MB.