Ladybird is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

developed by the Ladybird Browser Initiative, a

nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

focused on development of the browser. It is licensed under the

BSD 2-Clause License BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD licens ...

. An

alpha release The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

is planned in 2026,

beta release The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

is expected in 2027, and a stable release for general public in 2028. Originally a component of SerenityOS, it is now being developed as a standalone project.

Features

Ladybird uses a new

browser engine A browser engine (also known as a layout engine or rendering engine) is a core software component of every major web browser. The primary job of a browser engine is to transform HTML documents and other resources of a web page into an interacti ...

called LibWeb that is being created from scratch by the development team. Unlike SerenityOS, it will also use other open source libraries for development. An

ad blocking Ad blocking (or ad filtering) is a software capability for blocking or altering online advertising in a History of the web browser, web browser, an Application software, application or a network. This may be done using browser extensions or othe ...

feature is planned. Unlike most new web browsers, Ladybird does not rely on Chromium or Firefox and uses its own

rendering engine Rendering is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from input data such as 3D models. The word "rendering" (in one of its senses) originally meant the task performed by an artist when depicting a real or imag ...

and

JavaScript engine The first engines for JavaScript were mere interpreters of the source code, but all relevant modern engines use just-in-time compilation for improved performance. JavaScript engines are typically developed by web browser vendors, and every maj ...

History

The project was initially developed by the SerenityOS community using its internal

software libraries In computing, a library is a collection of resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled functions and classes, or a library can ...

implementing specific features (with self-descriptive names prefixed with “Lib”, e.g. LibWeb, LibHTTP, LibJS, or LibWasm). Ladybird was announced by Andreas Kling, the maintainer and founder of the SerenityOS project, in September 2022. On June 30, 2024, Kling announced that he would be stepping back from the main project to focus solely on building the Ladybird browser. In July 2024 the Ladybird Browser Initiative announced that it was being funded by

Chris Wanstrath Chris Wanstrath (born March 13, 1985) is an American technology entrepreneur and programmer. He is the founder of Null Games, and the co-founder and former CEO of GitHub, an Internet hosting service for software development and version control ...

, the co-founder of

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

. Ladybird began receiving sponsorships to fund its development including from large companies such as

Shopify Shopify Inc., stylized as ''shopify'', headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, operates an e-commerce platform for retail point-of-sale systems that offers payments, marketing, shipping, inventory management, transaction management, and customer eng ...

and

Proton VPN Proton VPN is a VPN service launched in 2017 and operated by the Swiss company Proton AG, the company behind the email service Proton Mail. According to its official website, Proton VPN and Proton Mail share the same management team, offices, an ...

. As of March 2025, it ranked fourth highest on the Web Platform Tests, a suite of tests used by browser developers, below Chrome, Safari and Firefox. It also had the second most conformant JavaScript Engine after Firefox's SpiderMonkey.

References

External links

* {{Browser engines Cross-platform web browsers Free web browsers MacOS web browsers Linux web browsers Free software for Linux Free software for macOS Software using the BSD license Free software programmed in C++ Web browsers that use Qt Free layout engines