Opera switched away from its proprietary Presto rendering engine in 2013, moving its browsers to an open-source Chromium-based engine. The change was driven by website compatibility and a desire to put more engineering effort into browser features rather than maintaining a separate engine. It was a strategic reset—not an adoption of the Google Chrome product.
Why did Opera move from Presto to Chromium?
Opera announced the transition on February 13, 2013, when it reported 300 million monthly users. The company said it would gradually move most upcoming smartphone and computer browsers to WebKit and Chromium. Opera’s stated rationale combined four considerations:
- Compatibility: Opera wanted pages to behave more consistently with websites increasingly built and tested around WebKit-era browsers.
- Engineering focus: Maintaining a modern rendering engine required substantial work. Opera said it preferred to put its engineers into browser innovation and user experience instead of continuing to build its own engine.
- A shared open-source foundation: Chromium offered a large body of code and an active development community that Opera could contribute to and build upon.
- Participation rather than isolation: Opera could submit improvements to shared engine projects; it said it had already contributed patches, including an improvement to multi-column layout.
Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie described WebKit as a strong foundation, saying it supported the standards Opera cared about and had the performance the company needed. He also said working with open-source communities made more sense than developing Opera’s own rendering engine further. The company’s later account emphasized that compatibility mattered, but that concentrating on browser innovation was the larger goal.
Did Opera switch to Google Chrome?
No. Opera adopted code from the open-source Chromium project and related rendering-engine components; it did not become the Chrome product. Chromium is an open-source browser project that supplies much of the code used by Chrome, while Chrome is Google’s separate browser product.
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The terminology changed as the technology evolved. In 2013, Opera described its transition in terms of WebKit and Chromium. After Google forked WebKit to create Blink, Opera followed the Chromium/Blink direction. In a 2017 statement, Opera said it had used Presto through 2013 and was then using an improved open-source Blink/Chromium engine. The sequence is best understood as Presto → Chromium/WebKit stack → Blink/Chromium, with the labels depending on the period.
What changed in Opera 15?
Opera 15, released in July 2013, was the first major desktop version implementing the transition described in the company’s follow-up account. It was not simply Presto removed and Chromium dropped in. Opera said its Quick cross-platform interface framework, introduced in 2003, was deeply entangled with Presto. Replacing the engine therefore required rebuilding much of the browser’s architecture.
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Opera rebuilt the main interface using native code and used web-based components where prototypes performed well. The redesigned browser introduced or emphasized Speed Dial, Stash, and Discover. M2 mail was separated into its own download. As a result, Opera 15 felt like a fresh start, and some familiar features from classic Opera were absent or reorganized.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What happened to Opera Presto?
Presto was Opera’s proprietary rendering engine. Opera used it through 2013, then moved to the Chromium-based engine family. The change meant Opera no longer maintained a wholly separate rendering engine for its mainstream browser, but instead built on and contributed to an open-source ecosystem.
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That shift also changed the balance between continuity and development priorities: the browser retained Opera’s product identity and could develop its own interface and features, while the underlying engine was shared with other Chromium-based browsers. Opera’s account of the transition presents that trade-off as a way to improve compatibility and free engineers to focus on the browser itself.
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