Welcome to the Basilisk home page

Basilisk is a free and open source desktop web browser focused on long-term maintainability and intentional development. It offers a highly customizable interface and a stable platform where new features, fixes, and improvements are introduced thoughtfully rather than through constant disruptive redesigns.

Basilisk is built on the Unified XUL Platform (UXP) and the Goanna rendering engine, an independent fork of Mozilla’s pre-Servo code base. UXP emphasizes maintainability and continuity, allowing features and extensions to remain usable over long periods of time, while still incorporating relevant web standards and site compatibility improvements.

Independent development

Basilisk is developed and maintained by the Basilisk Browser Development Team. While it is built on the Unified XUL Platform (UXP), Basilisk is not developed by Moonchild Productions or the Pale Moon development team.

Project direction, release decisions, and maintenance of Basilisk are handled independently and are the responsibility of the Basilisk development team.

Basilisk is considered stable software. This means it does not change for the sake of change. Updates are made deliberately, with an emphasis on maintaining existing workflows and minimizing unnecessary disruption.

If you want a browser that works consistently and respects established workflows, Basilisk may be a good fit.

Basilisk has also become popular among preservation and revival communities that rely on long-lived web technologies and controlled legacy environments. Its stable architecture makes it well-suited for intentional use cases that modern browsers increasingly abandon.

What does this browser support?

Basilisk supports the features required by contemporary websites, including advanced scripting, WebRTC, modern CSS, HTML5, and downloadable fonts, with an emphasis on real-world site compatibility.

In addition, Basilisk supports NPAPI plugins and XUL-based extensions. These capabilities enable specialized workflows, preservation efforts, and controlled use of legacy technologies that are no longer supported by most modern browsers.

Further details can be found on the features page.

Is this browser associated with Mozilla?

In one word: No.

Basilisk is an independent browser project and is not affiliated with Mozilla or the Firefox project.

Release notes

You can find the release notes for the browser here.