Three times faster than Chrome. Better privacy by default than Firefox. Uses 35% less battery on mobile. By blocking harmful ads and trackers you get a faster Internet. Brave loads major news sites up to six times faster than Chrome, Safari and Firefox on mobile and desktop.
Other browsers claim to have a “private mode,” but this only hides your history from others using your browser. Brave lets you use Tor right in a tab. Tor not only hides your history, it masks your location from the sites you visit by routing your browsing through several servers before it reaches your destination. These connections are encrypted to increase anonymity.
Turn on Brave Rewards to earn frequent flier-like tokens for viewing privacy-respecting ads. You can set the number of ads you see per hour. Currently you can support your favorite web creators with your tokens, but soon you’ll be able to spend tokens on premium content, gift cards, and more.
Control the Ads You See
Brave Ads is an opt-in advertising platform that rewards you to view non-invasive ads without compromising your privacy. In exchange for paying attention, you earn 70% of the ad revenue that Brave receives. That revenue comes in the form of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT),7 which are tokens that can be spent online.8 At the end of each month, you can either withdraw your BAT in the form of cash or pay it forward by tipping your favorite websites and content creators.9 Just open the Brave Rewards panel and hit “Send a tip” to instantly share your BAT earnings with the content creators you love.10
Getting paid isn’t the only perk of opting into Brave Ads — it allows you to engage with advertisements and brands in a more thoughtful way. Brave gives you control over the ads you see and how often you see them. No more having to sit through ads on YouTube,11 and definitely no more searching through all of your open tabs to find out where that annoyingly loud video ad is playing. With Brave, ads play on your terms.
Switching is Easy
- Import and continue where you left off
- It’s easy to import your settings from your old browser. You can do it during the welcome tour or later through the menus.
- All of your old browser profiles will appear in a list. You can import other browser data through the main menu item called “Import Bookmarks and Settings.”
Support your favorite sites with Brave Rewards
- Turn on Brave Rewards and give a little back to the sites you frequent most. Earn frequent flyer-like tokens (BAT) for viewing privacy-respecting ads through Brave and help fund the content you love
- Browsing the web with Brave is free: with Brave Rewards activated, you can support the content creators you love at the amount that works for you.
- Brave can automatically distribute your contributions based on how much time you spend on sites. Or, you can choose to tip sites directly, and even offer a fixed monthly tip amount.
- All of this works while keeping your browsing history private. Your funds are made available to site owners through an anonymous ledger system, so you can’t be identified based on the sites you visit and support. Over 10,000 publishers and content creators have registered to receive Brave Rewards.
- Remember: these contributions are optional – browsing the web with Brave is free.
Experience unparalleled privacy and security.
- Brave fights malware and prevents tracking, keeping your information safe and secure. It’s our top priority.
We’re not in the personal data business.
- Our servers neither see nor store your browsing data – it stays private, on your devices, until you delete it. Which means we won’t ever sell your data to third parties.
Customize your shield settings
- Choose your settings on a per-site or browser-wide basis. See how many ads and trackers are being blocked by Brave every day on the New Tab Page.
Security meets simplicity
- If you’re willing to research, download, and install multiple extensions, and carefully configure and correctly maintain settings in both the browser and extensions, you can match some of Brave’s privacy and security.
Brave does all that work for you. Simple, right?
- Whenever possible using the HTTPS Everywhere list, Brave automatically upgrades to HTTPS for secure, encrypted communications when an ordinary browser would use an insecure connection.
Defaults that matter
- Browse confidently with default settings that block phishing, malware, and malvertising. Also, plugins, which have proven to be a security risk, are disabled by default.
Sync your devices bravely
- Brave Sync, currently in beta, can be enabled to encrypt and synchronize your preferred settings and bookmarks. However, Brave does not have the keys to decrypt your data.
More Features:
Shields
- Ad blocking
- Fingerprinting prevention*
- Cookie control*
- HTTPS upgrading*
- Block scripts*
- Per-site shield settings
- Configurable global shield defaults
Security
- Clear browsing data
- Built-in password manager
- Form autofill
- Control content access to full-screen presentation
- Control site access to autoplay media
- Send “Do not track” with browsing requests
Search
- Choose default search engine
- Use keyboard shortcuts for alternate search engines
- Option to use DuckDuckGo for private window search
Brave Rewards
- Earn by viewing private ads
- Tip your favorite creators
- Contribute monthly to sites
- Auto-contribute to sites
- Verify with Uphold and move funds in and out of your wallet
- Become a verified creator and start earning BAT from tips, contributions and referrals
Tabs & Windows
- Private Windows
- Pinned Tabs
- Auto-unload
- Drag and drop
- Duplicate
- Close Options
- Find on page
- Print page
Address Bar
- Add Bookmark
- Autosuggest URLs
- Search from address bar
- Autosuggest search terms
- Show/hide bookmarks toolbar
- Show secure or insecure site
- Extensions/Plugins
- Brave Desktop now supports most of the Chrome extensions in the chrome web store
Brave Firewall + VPN (paid feature, iOS only)
- Unlike many browsers that offer VPNs which mask a user’s IP address, Brave’s Firewall + VPN, powered by Guardian, offers enhanced security and privacy by encrypting and protecting anything users do while connected to the Internet.
- Block trackers across all apps
- Protects all connections
- We never share or sell you info
- VPN server does not know who you are
What’s New:
Starting today, new Brave users will have the search functionality in the Brave browser powered by Brave Search, giving them the privacy and independence of a search/browser alternative to Big Tech. Brave Search is built on top of an independent index, and doesn’t track users, their searches, or their clicks. Privacy-preserving Brave Search now replaces Google as the default search engine used in the address bar for new Brave users in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom; Brave Search as default also replaces Qwant in France, and DuckDuckGo in Germany, with more geographies to be added in the next several months. Existing Brave users will keep their chosen search engine default, and can set Brave Search as the default search engine in Brave or most other major browsers.
Today’s Brave desktop browser update (version 1.31), as well as the Brave Android app (version 1.31)* and the Brave iOS app (version 1.32) all automatically offer Brave Search as the default for new users in these five countries, with fully localized versions in non-English geographies. Brave users can easily choose a different search option if they prefer by managing their search engine settings. Brave Search is also available in any other browser at search.brave.com.
Brave Search is currently not displaying ads, but the free version of Brave Search will soon be ad-supported. Brave Search will also offer an ad-free Premium version in the near future.
“Brave Search has grown significantly since its release last June, with nearly 80 million queries per month. Our users are pleased with the comprehensive privacy solution that Brave Search provides against Big Tech by being integrated into our browser,” said Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave. “As we know from experience in many browsers, the default setting is crucial for adoption, and Brave Search has reached the quality and critical mass needed to become our default search option, and to offer our users a seamless privacy-by-default online experience.”
Brave Search is also launching the Web Discovery Project (WDP), a privacy-preserving system for users to anonymously contribute data to improve Brave Search coverage and quality, and its independence and competitiveness against Big Tech alternatives. The WDP is a strictly opt-in feature and protects user privacy and anonymity by design, so that contributed data cannot be linked to individuals or their devices, and cannot be linked together for a user or set of users; this prevents deanonymization.
The WDP represents a fundamental shift in how a search index is built to serve relevant results for users. It is a major step forward from the typical server-side aggregation used by the industry. Big Tech search providers collect data from users without asking or notifying users, to continuously grow their indexes—the list of billions of web pages they draw from to deliver results—and to ensure results are relevant and never stale. This data can be, and often is, associated with users personally by an identifier or linkable records. Unlike those search providers, the Web Discovery Project is designed so that all data received is unlinkable, making it impossible to build profiles or sessions of Web Discovery Project contributors. This means there’s no data for Brave to sell to advertisers, or lose to theft or hacking, or hand over to government agencies, allowing us to keep promises through technology rather than slogans.
The system contributes anonymous search and browsing data made within the Brave browser from users who have opted in. This data helps build the Brave Search independent index, and ensures Brave Search shows results relevant to search queries. For a URL to be sent, it needs to be visited independently by a large number of people; this is achieved by using the novel STAR cryptographic protocol. The WDP’s privacy-preserving methodology discards search queries that are too long or suspicious looking. It also discards odd URLs (such as capability URLs), URLs of pages that the creator defined as non-indexable, and of course pages that are not public or that require any sort of authentication. The Web Discovery Project runs automatically while a user is browsing the web, so it requires no effort on the part of contributors. Users who have opted in but no longer wish to participate can opt out at any time.