To add a little bit to my UI complaints: I recall that one of the original designs goals of Chrome was to reduce the chrome (ref: 2008 Chrome comic book). Over the years I’ve had a number of UI complaints with Chrome too and actually switched to Opera multiple times, but overall I think they did a good job at hiding the chrome and presenting what really matters. On the other hand, Firefox UI elements and cues stand out and intrude even after disabling everything I can find. Maybe some people prefer that for “usability”, but I personally prefer minimal UIs (hint: Apple user) and find them perfectly usable.

Try using a large blocklist[1] in your hosts file and installing umatrix[2] and/or ublock origin[3] to block garbage scripts from loading. I don't know if that will help, but that's what I'm doing and Firefox is as fast or faster than Chrome.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=hosts+blocklists

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/

[3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

I confess that I have uMatrix in Chrome but not FF, but I do use pihole, and it’s not really a third party scripts problem, FF feels slower on perfectly clean sites.

Maybe it has something to do with the combination of your OS and Firefox versions. I've just tested a few sites (without umatrix, but with Firefox's built-in privacy protection) and they are about the same speed according to the network console. Sometimes Firefox is slightly faster, other times Chrome is slightly faster. (Ubuntu 16.04)

I have performance issues with heavy sites because I use many extensions. Sometimes, I disable all extensions and it stills sluggish on Facebook for example, but the issue goes away when I use a new profile. Maybe you can try it.

This is my experience as well.

I really wanted Firefox to be a replacement for Chrome but it’s so much more sluggish that it’s not even a comparison.

Chrome does seem faster and better to me too. Nevertheless I switched to Firefox some years ago (and I’m quite a Google fan). It is good enough for heavy use.