Microsoft Edge is the web browser Microsoft ships with Windows. Since 2020 it has been rebuilt on Chromium, the same open-source engine behind Google Chrome, which means web pages look and behave almost identically in both. It replaced the old Internet Explorer entirely.
A simple way to picture it: two car brands using the same engine under different bodywork. The badge and dashboard differ, but the motor is shared, so they drive much the same. Edge and Chrome are like that, both running on Chromium, which is why a site tested in Google Chrome rarely surprises you in Edge.
For a business this is good news. Because Edge shares Chrome’s foundation, you no longer maintain separate fixes the way the Internet Explorer era demanded. Edge does add its own touches, like Microsoft account sign-in and built-in shopping tools, but the rendering core is the same.
There is one reason it still earns a slot in testing even so. On Windows machines Edge is the default browser that opens when someone clicks a link, so in plenty of office and corporate settings it carries far more real traffic than its global share suggests. Most of what differs is layered on top of the shared engine rather than in it: a stricter default tracking-prevention mode that can block third-party scripts, the built-in PDF viewer, and integrations like the sidebar. None of that changes how your CSS renders, but it can change whether an embedded widget or an analytics tag behaves, which is exactly the kind of thing a five-minute pass catches and a guess does not.
At TopDevs we test client sites across Chromium browsers including Edge as standard, so your Windows visitors get the exact experience you signed off on.
