The NetSurf project was started in April 2002 in response to a discussion of the deficiencies of the RISC OS platform's existing web browsers.

NetSurf was voted "Best non-commercial software" four times in Drobe Launchpad's annual RISC OS awards between 2004 and 2008.

[4][5][6][7] NetSurf supports both mainstream systems (e.g. macOS and Unix-like) and older or uncommon platforms (e.g. AmigaOS, Haiku, Atari TOS, RISC OS, and Redox[8]).

[11] NetSurf's multi-platform core is written in ANSI C, and implements most of the HTML 4 and CSS 2.1 specifications using its own bespoke layout engine.

As well as rendering GIF, JPEG, PNG and BMP images, the browser also supports formats native to RISC OS, including Sprite, Draw and ArtWorks files.

After five years of development, the first stable version of the browser was released on 19 May 2007 to coincide with the Wakefield RISC OS show.

These included improving the GTK front end,[26] adding paginated PDF export support[27] and developing the project's HTML 5 compliant parsing library, Hubbub.

[33] In 2010 the NetSurf project did not apply to participate in Google Summer of Code due to the developers having other commitments.

[54] Lead developer John-Mark Bell said at the time "Realistically, the people qualified to maintain the RISC OS port are up to their necks in other stuff.