The Apple WebKit team introduced the initial version of the Speedometer benchmark in 2014. Since then, it has become an industry-wide tool for gauging browser optimization and performance, even as some stakeholders complained that having been developed in the Apple ecosystem, it could not help but exhibit systemic biases that favored Safari. So, Microsoft, Google and Mozilla joined Apple to create Speedometer 3.0, “a new governance benchmark” that aims for neutrality across the architectures used by Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla’s Firefox.

In an announcement on BrowserBench.org, the collaborators say Speedometer 3.0 marks the first time “the Speedometer benchmark, or any major browser benchmark, has been developed through a cross-industry collaboration supported by each major browser engine: Blink/V8, Gecko/SpiderMonkey, and WebKit/JavaScriptCore.”

The result is what the team calls “a more representative set of tests that reflect the modern Web.”

“Speedometer 3.0 has new tests, including rendering canvas and SVG charts, code editing, WYSIWYG editing, and reading news site,” reports Macworld, adding that “the test runner has been improved to better gauge response to user actions. The Speedometer 3.0 site has more details on its tests.”

The new benchmark also features new tests that evaluate “a more broad and representative cross section of the engine, providing new opportunities to optimize JS, Layout, CSS, Graphics, and DOM APIs in order to improve user experience on the Web,” say the partners, who “added new tests that simulate rendering canvas and SVG charts (React Stockcharts, Chart.js, Perf Dashboard, and Observable Plot), code editing (CodeMirror), WYSIWYG editing (TipTap), and reading news sites (Next.js and Nuxt.js).”

While the collaborators concede no collection of tests can simulate the entire Web, Speedometer 3.0 does take into account “the most common versions of popular frameworks including React, Vue, Angular, Preact, Lit, Backbone, and Svelte,” writes MacRumors.

“An important goal was to capture common, present-day challenges faced by developers by incorporating new variants, frameworks, and modern usage scenarios to the Speedometer tests,” per a Microsoft blog post that notes things like DOM and CSS rules are “an important driver of end-user perceived latency.”

“Speedometer 3.0’s release is a result of the collaboration among browser developers to improve the Web as a whole,” Apple writes on the WebKit blog. “Much as Interop 2024 represents joint work to test and improve standards compliance, Speedometer 3.0 is a joint effort to test and improve browser performance.”

Details of the test development and protocols can be found on the Speedometer 3.0 page at BrowserBench.org.