Compare / browsers

Naver Whale vs Chrome

Whale 5.39 runs on Chromium 150, five majors behind Chrome 155, names itself in the user agent and client hints, and sends a TLS hello one extension short of Chrome's. What that means for driving it and for how sites see it.

Naver Whale Google Chrome

Naver Whale is Naver's Chromium browser, the one that ships with Naver services in Korea. On the fleet, Whale 5.39.412.57 stable is built on Chromium 150.0.7871.252, while Chrome stable is 155.0.8059.84 — measured the same night. Both run headful by default and cost the same two threads. The questions for a scraper: does Whale look like Chrome on the wire, does it hide that it's Whale, and what does running five Chromium majors behind cost you?

As a developer: driving them

	Naver Whale	Google Chrome
Version on the fleet	Whale 5.39 stable on Chromium 150. Stable channel only, no pinned versions.	Chrome 155 stable on Chromium 155, with `beta` (156) and `dev` (157) channels and pinned previous majors (`version`).
Launch options	`channel`, `live_view`, `screen_size`, `keep_alive`, `start_url`, `record`. No `cdp` (400) and no persistent `profile` (`400 profile_unsupported_engine`).	The same plus `cdp`, `profile` and `version`.
Playwright features	Main-world evaluate, console events, init scripts, routing, screenshots, PDF, device emulation, tracing — all work (measured).	The same list, all working (measured).
Web platform	Chromium 150: no `Iterator.prototype.includes`/`join`/`Iterator.zip`, no `FontFace` width, no `<camera>` element, no CSS `margin-trim`, `text-decoration-skip-spaces` or `symbols()`, no `media-playback-while-not-visible` policy (measured).	Chromium 155: all of the above present (measured).
Privacy Sandbox	No Topics API; Shared Storage and `document.requestStorageAccessFor` are exposed (measured).	Topics API exposed; Shared Storage and `requestStorageAccessFor` are not (measured).
WebGL	WebGL 2.0 on SwiftShader (ANGLE, Vulkan), like Chrome (measured; before 2026-10-17 headful Whale had no WebGL context on the fleet).	WebGL 2.0 on SwiftShader (ANGLE, Vulkan), the software renderer of a GPU-less server.

As a scraper: what the site sees

	Naver Whale	Google Chrome
User agent	`Chrome/150.0.0.0 Whale/5.39.412.57 Safari/537.36` — Whale names itself, with its full version.	`Chrome/155.0.0.0 … Safari/537.36`.
Client hints	Brands `Whale 5`, `Chromium 150`; full versions `5.39.412.57` and `150.0.7871.252`.	Brands `Google Chrome 155`, `Chromium 155`; full version `155.0.8059.84`.
TLS	JA4 `t13d1516h2_8daaf6152771_806a8c22fdea`: 16 ciphers, 18 extensions; its own peetprint.	JA4 `t13d1517h2_8daaf6152771_cb7bf5808d99`: the same 16 ciphers, 19 extensions. The cipher part of JA4 matches; the extension part doesn't.
HTTP/2 and headers	Chromium's SETTINGS and WINDOW_UPDATE (`1:65536;2:0;4:6291456;6:262144\|15663105`); header order `sec-ch-ua` … `user-agent`, `accept`, `sec-fetch-*`.	Identical HTTP/2 fingerprint and header order.
Fingerprint values	The machine's own cores, memory and screen; canvas hash `4f88e08a`, 5 plugins, `en-US, en`; the same WebGL renderer as Chrome.	Canvas hash `f5a94624` — a different canvas hash from Whale's on the same renderer; the same plugins and languages. Neither adds fingerprint randomisation.
Bot checks	bot.sannysoft.com: 1 flag, "WebGL Renderer" (SwiftShader on a GPU-less server).	The same 1 flag.

Which to pick

Chrome for the most common visitor on the web, the newest stable engine, CDP, persistent profiles, beta/dev channels and pinned majors.
Whale when a site — typically a Korean one built around Naver — should see a real Whale visitor: the brand is consistent in the user agent, the client hints and a TLS hello that differs from Chrome's. It doesn't pass as Chrome, and it isn't meant to.
Mind the engine age: code written for Chromium 151–155 features may not run on Whale's Chromium 150. Use Chrome or Edge for those.

Measured on the fleet (2026-10-17)

One headful launch of each through the same proxy, probed from inside a page and via tls.peet.ws.

Launch and cost

Single run; timings depend on the proxy and on fleet load.

	Naver Whale	Google Chrome
Launch body	{"headless":false}	{"headless":false}
Threads used	2 (linux_headful)	2 (linux_headful)
Browser version	150.0.7871.252	155.0.8059.84
Launch request → browser ready	0.4 s	0.4 s
Playwright connect	0.1 s	0.1 s
Load example.com	1.4 s	2.6 s
Load tls.peet.ws/api/all	1.3 s	2.1 s

What the network sees

From tls.peet.ws/api/all, requested by the browser itself. JA3 hashes change between runs of the same build (GREASE), so compare JA4 and the HTTP/2 fingerprint.

	Naver Whale	Google Chrome
HTTP version	h2	h2
JA4	t13d1516h2_8daaf6152771_806a8c22fdea	t13d1517h2_8daaf6152771_cb7bf5808d99
Peetprint hash	67c3e9111bed9e7f03d2f21d6d88994b	fc97c1cdfb1409c9a9326c1b726d1dee
Akamai HTTP/2 fingerprint	1:65536;2:0;4:6291456;6:262144\|15663105\|0\|m,a,s,p	1:65536;2:0;4:6291456;6:262144\|15663105\|0\|m,a,s,p
Cipher suites / extensions	16 / 18	16 / 19
Header order (first 12)	method, authority, scheme, path, sec-ch-ua, sec-ch-ua-mobile, sec-ch-ua-platform, upgrade-insecure-requests, user-agent, accept, sec-fetch-site, sec-fetch-mode	method, authority, scheme, path, sec-ch-ua, sec-ch-ua-mobile, sec-ch-ua-platform, upgrade-insecure-requests, user-agent, accept, sec-fetch-site, sec-fetch-mode

What page scripts see

Read with page.evaluate on example.com. Cores and memory are the server's and vary between fleet nodes.

	Naver Whale	Google Chrome
navigator.userAgent	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/150.0.0.0 Whale/5.39.412.57 Safari/537.36	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/155.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
UA-CH brands	Whale 5 · Chromium 150 · Not/A)Brand 24	Google Chrome 155 · Chromium 155 · Not(A:Brand 24
UA-CH full version list	Whale 5.39.412.57 · Chromium 150.0.7871.252 · Not/A)Brand 24.0.0.0	Google Chrome 155.0.8059.84 · Chromium 155.0.8059.84 · Not(A:Brand 24.0.0.0
navigator.platform / vendor	Linux x86_64 / Google Inc.	Linux x86_64 / Google Inc.
Languages	en-US, en	en-US, en
Timezone / locale	UTC / en-US	UTC / en-US
Screen (w×h×availW×availH×depth)	1280x720x1280x720x24	1280x720x1280x720x24
Window outer / inner / DPR	1288x805 / 1280x720 / 1	1288x805 / 1280x720 / 1
hardwareConcurrency / deviceMemory	16 / 32	32 / 32
WebGL vendor	Google Inc. (Google)	Google Inc. (Google)
WebGL renderer	ANGLE (Google, Vulkan 1.3.0 (SwiftShader Device (Subzero) (0x0000C0DE)), SwiftShader driver)	ANGLE (Google, Vulkan 1.3.0 (SwiftShader Device (Subzero) (0x0000C0DE)), SwiftShader driver)
WebGL version	WebGL 2.0 (OpenGL ES 3.0 Chromium)	WebGL 2.0 (OpenGL ES 3.0 Chromium)
WebGPU (navigator.gpu)	yes	yes
Canvas hash	4f88e08a	f5a94624
navigator.webdriver	no	no
window.chrome / navigator.connection	yes / yes	yes / yes
Plugins / PDF viewer	5 / yes	5 / yes
Notification.permission / permissions.query	default / prompt	default / prompt

Web platform features

Presence probes; a user agent that claims one version while exposing another's features is a detectable inconsistency.

	Naver Whale	Google Chrome
`Iterator.prototype.includes` (new in Chrome 154)	no	yes
`FontFace.width` (new in Chrome 154)	no	yes
CSS `text-decoration-inset` (new in Chrome 154)	no	no
`Iterator.prototype.join` (Chrome 153)	no	yes
`Iterator.zip` (Chrome 153)	no	yes
CSS `scroll-axis-lock` (Chrome 153)	no	no
`<camera>` element (Chrome 153)	no	yes
`document.requestStorageAccessFor` (deprecated in 153)	yes	no
Topics API (`document.browsingTopics`)	no	yes
Protected Audience (`navigator.joinAdInterestGroup`)	yes	yes
Shared Storage (`window.sharedStorage`)	yes	no
Attribution Reporting (`window.attributionReporting`)	no	no
Private Aggregation	no	no
WebHID (`navigator.hid`)	yes	yes
CSS `margin-trim` (Chrome 155)	no	yes
CSS `text-decoration-skip-spaces` (Chrome 155)	no	yes
CSS `corner` shorthand (Chrome 155)	no	no
CSS `symbols()` (Chrome 155)	no	yes
`Element.streamAppendHTML` (Chrome 155)	no	no
`WebTransport.reliability` (Chrome 155)	no	no
`window.maximize()` — Additional Windowing Controls (Chrome 155)	no	no
Canvas `srgb-linear` colour space (Chrome 155)	no	no
Permission policy `media-playback-while-not-visible` (Chrome 155)	no	yes
CSS `random()` (Chrome 156)	no	no
CSS `scroll-snap-type: pair` (Chrome 156)	no	no
Fenced frames (`window.fence`) — removal starts in 157	yes	yes
`rel=compression-dictionary` (Chrome 156 updates)	yes	yes

bot.sannysoft.com

The classic headless-detection test page; what it marks red.

	Naver Whale	Google Chrome
Checks / failed	57 / 1	57 / 1
Failed checks	WebGL Renderer	WebGL Renderer

A plain-HTTP URL (http://ip-api.com/json)

Chrome 154 warns before loading insecure HTTP by default — does that reach an automated session?

	Naver Whale	Google Chrome
Final URL	http://ip-api.com/json/?fields=status	http://ip-api.com/json/?fields=status
HTTP status	200	200
Content loaded / warning page first	yes / no	yes / no

Playwright over the remote connection

Which client features work on this side.

	Naver Whale	Google Chrome
page.evaluate runs in the page's own world	yes	yes
addInitScript visible to page scripts	yes	yes
Console events	yes	yes
Request interception (page.route)	yes	yes
Screenshot	yes	yes
PDF	yes	yes
Mobile device emulation	yes	yes
Tracing	yes	yes

Rows where the two sides differ are highlighted. IP addresses are replaced with placeholders (203.0.113.x). The probe is compare/probe.mjs in our repository; the raw result is below.

Raw output

{
  "ran_at": "2026-10-17T10:49:59.430Z",
  "sides": [
    {
      "label": "Naver Whale",
      "engine": "whale",
      "body": {
        "headless": false
      },
      "launch": {
        "browser": "whale",
        "resource_class": "linux_headful",
        "weight": 2,
        "launch_ms": 421,
        "connect_ms": 108,
        "example_ms": 1353,
        "peet_ms": 1294
      },
      "network": {
        "http_version": "h2",
        "ja4": "t13d1516h2_8daaf6152771_806a8c22fdea",
        "ja3_hash": "3acae35a89afdb93498313660eb078c5",
        "peetprint_hash": "67c3e9111bed9e7f03d2f21d6d88994b",
        "ciphers": 16,
        "extensions": 18,
        "akamai_h2": "1:65536;2:0;4:6291456;6:262144|15663105|0|m,a,s,p",
        "akamai_h2_hash": "52d84b11737d980aef856699f885ca86",
        "header_order": [
          "method",
          "authority",
          "scheme",
          "path",
          "sec-ch-ua",
          "sec-ch-ua-mobile",
          "sec-ch-ua-platform",
          "upgrade-insecure-requests",
          "user-agent",
          "accept",
          "sec-fetch-site",
          "sec-fetch-mode"
        ]
      },
      "page": {
        "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/150.0.0.0 Whale/5.39.412.57 Safari/537.36",
        "platform": "Linux x86_64",
        "vendor": "Google Inc.",
        "languages": [
          "en-US",
          "en"
        ],
        "hardware_concurrency": 16,
        "device_memory": 32,
        "max_touch_points": 0,
        "webdriver": false,
        "plugins": 5,
        "pdf_viewer": true,
        "ua_data": {
          "brands": [
            {
              "brand": "Whale",
              "version": "5"
            },
            {
              "brand": "Chromium",
              "version": "150"
            },
            {
              "brand": "Not/A)Brand",
              "version": "24"
            }
          ],
          "mobile": false,
          "platform": "Linux",
          "architecture": "x86",
          "bitness": "64",
          "formFactors": [
            "Desktop"
          ],
          "fullVersionList": [
            {
              "brand": "Whale",
              "version": "5.39.412.57"
            },
            {
              "brand": "Chromium",
              "version": "150.0.7871.252"
            },
            {
              "brand": "Not/A)Brand",
              "version": "24.0.0.0"
            }
          ],
          "model": "",
          "platformVersion": "",
          "uaFullVersion": "5.39.412.57",
          "wow64": false
        },
        "screen": "1280x720x1280x720x24",
        "window": {
          "outer": "1288x805",
          "inner": "1280x720",
          "dpr": 1
        },
        "timezone": "UTC",
        "locale": "en-US",
        "webgl": {
          "vendor": "Google Inc. (Google)",
          "renderer": "ANGLE (Google, Vulkan 1.3.0 (SwiftShader Device (Subzero) (0x0000C0DE)), SwiftShader driver)",
          "version": "WebGL 2.0 (OpenGL ES 3.0 Chromium)"
        },
        "canvas_hash": "4f88e08a",
        "webgpu": true,
        "chrome_object": true,
        "chrome_runtime": false,
        "notification_permission": "default",
        "notification_query": "prompt",
        "has_focus": true,
        "connection_api": true,
        "stack_read_by_debugger": false,
        "features": {
          "iterator_includes": false,
          "iterator_join": false,
          "iterator_zip": false,
          "fontface_width": false,
          "css_text_decoration_inset": false,
          "css_scroll_axis_lock": false,
          "websocket_options_bag": null,
          "camera_element": false,
          "topics_api": false,
          "protected_audience": true,
          "shared_storage": true,
          "attribution_reporting": false,
          "request_storage_access_for": true,
          "webhid": true,
          "private_aggregation": false,
          "css_margin_trim": false,
          "css_text_decoration_skip_spaces": false,
          "css_corner_shorthand": false,
          "css_symbols": false,
          "stream_append_html": false,
          "webtransport_reliability": false,
          "window_maximize": false,
          "canvas_srgb_linear": false,
          "policy_media_playback_while_not_visible": false,
          "css_random": false,
          "css_scroll_snap_pair": false,
          "fenced_frames": true,
          "compression_dictionary": true
        }
      },
      "page_main_world": null,
      "sannysoft": {
        "checks": 57,
        "failed": 1,
        "failed_names": [
          "WebGL Renderer"
        ],
        "passed": 30
      },
      "plain_http": {
        "final_url": "http://ip-api.com/json/?fields=status",
        "status": 200,
        "title": "",
        "loaded": true,
        "warning_page": false,
        "page_text": "{\"status\":\"success\"}"
      },
      "playwright": {
        "evaluate_in_main_world": true,
        "console_events": true,
        "init_script": true,
        "route": true,
        "screenshot": true,
        "pdf": true,
        "mobile_emulation": true,
        "tracing": true
      },
      "browser_version": "150.0.7871.252"
    },
    {
      "label": "Google Chrome",
      "engine": "chrome",
      "body": {
        "headless": false
      },
      "launch": {
        "browser": "chrome",
        "resource_class": "linux_headful",
        "weight": 2,
        "launch_ms": 409,
        "connect_ms": 90,
        "example_ms": 2588,
        "peet_ms": 2094
      },
      "network": {
        "http_version": "h2",
        "ja4": "t13d1517h2_8daaf6152771_cb7bf5808d99",
        "ja3_hash": "0402a942f2641c0452b616ab4bacc02d",
        "peetprint_hash": "fc97c1cdfb1409c9a9326c1b726d1dee",
        "ciphers": 16,
        "extensions": 19,
        "akamai_h2": "1:65536;2:0;4:6291456;6:262144|15663105|0|m,a,s,p",
        "akamai_h2_hash": "52d84b11737d980aef856699f885ca86",
        "header_order": [
          "method",
          "authority",
          "scheme",
          "path",
          "sec-ch-ua",
          "sec-ch-ua-mobile",
          "sec-ch-ua-platform",
          "upgrade-insecure-requests",
          "user-agent",
          "accept",
          "sec-fetch-site",
          "sec-fetch-mode"
        ]
      },
      "page": {
        "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/155.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
        "platform": "Linux x86_64",
        "vendor": "Google Inc.",
        "languages": [
          "en-US",
          "en"
        ],
        "hardware_concurrency": 32,
        "device_memory": 32,
        "max_touch_points": 0,
        "webdriver": false,
        "plugins": 5,
        "pdf_viewer": true,
        "ua_data": {
          "brands": [
            {
              "brand": "Google Chrome",
              "version": "155"
            },
            {
              "brand": "Chromium",
              "version": "155"
            },
            {
              "brand": "Not(A:Brand",
              "version": "24"
            }
          ],
          "mobile": false,
          "platform": "Linux",
          "architecture": "x86",
          "bitness": "64",
          "formFactors": [
            "Desktop"
          ],
          "fullVersionList": [
            {
              "brand": "Google Chrome",
              "version": "155.0.8059.84"
            },
            {
              "brand": "Chromium",
              "version": "155.0.8059.84"
            },
            {
              "brand": "Not(A:Brand",
              "version": "24.0.0.0"
            }
          ],
          "model": "",
          "platformVersion": "",
          "uaFullVersion": "155.0.8059.84",
          "wow64": false
        },
        "screen": "1280x720x1280x720x24",
        "window": {
          "outer": "1288x805",
          "inner": "1280x720",
          "dpr": 1
        },
        "timezone": "UTC",
        "locale": "en-US",
        "webgl": {
          "vendor": "Google Inc. (Google)",
          "renderer": "ANGLE (Google, Vulkan 1.3.0 (SwiftShader Device (Subzero) (0x0000C0DE)), SwiftShader driver)",
          "version": "WebGL 2.0 (OpenGL ES 3.0 Chromium)"
        },
        "canvas_hash": "f5a94624",
        "webgpu": true,
        "chrome_object": true,
        "chrome_runtime": false,
        "notification_permission": "default",
        "notification_query": "prompt",
        "has_focus": true,
        "connection_api": true,
        "stack_read_by_debugger": false,
        "features": {
          "iterator_includes": true,
          "iterator_join": true,
          "iterator_zip": true,
          "fontface_width": true,
          "css_text_decoration_inset": false,
          "css_scroll_axis_lock": false,
          "websocket_options_bag": null,
          "camera_element": true,
          "topics_api": true,
          "protected_audience": true,
          "shared_storage": false,
          "attribution_reporting": false,
          "request_storage_access_for": false,
          "webhid": true,
          "private_aggregation": false,
          "css_margin_trim": true,
          "css_text_decoration_skip_spaces": true,
          "css_corner_shorthand": false,
          "css_symbols": true,
          "stream_append_html": false,
          "webtransport_reliability": false,
          "window_maximize": false,
          "canvas_srgb_linear": false,
          "policy_media_playback_while_not_visible": true,
          "css_random": false,
          "css_scroll_snap_pair": false,
          "fenced_frames": true,
          "compression_dictionary": true
        }
      },
      "page_main_world": null,
      "sannysoft": {
        "checks": 57,
        "failed": 1,
        "failed_names": [
          "WebGL Renderer"
        ],
        "passed": 30
      },
      "plain_http": {
        "final_url": "http://ip-api.com/json/?fields=status",
        "status": 200,
        "title": "",
        "loaded": true,
        "warning_page": false,
        "page_text": "{\"status\":\"success\"}"
      },
      "playwright": {
        "evaluate_in_main_world": true,
        "console_events": true,
        "init_script": true,
        "route": true,
        "screenshot": true,
        "pdf": true,
        "mobile_emulation": true,
        "tracing": true
      },
      "browser_version": "155.0.8059.84"
    }
  ]
}

Bottom line

Whale is a Chromium browser that tells every site it's Whale: its own brand in the user agent and client hints, a TLS hello one extension short of Chrome's, the same HTTP/2 and headers, and an engine five Chromium majors behind.

Both cost the same two threads headful; choose by which browser the site should believe it's talking to — and use Chrome when you need CDP or profiles.