What’s unique about Brave?
We may all have the same 24 hours but I saved an extra 40 seconds in one day. It may not seem like a lot but remember how long that is when you’re holding a squat. At this pace, you could save at least 18 minutes per month. And it’s all thanks to Brave Browser.
Jokes aside, let’s see what’s different in comparison to other browsers, and how it will upgrade your privacy, ad blocking, and overall web surfing experience.
In a nutshell, these are the most important features:
- It blocks ads and tracks on every website by default;
- It results in faster loading speed, longer battery life, and less mobile data usage;
- Its private search is enhanced by integrating with Tor;
- It encourages the use of a VPN, as a way of keeping your IP address private;
- Its search results are based on an independent search index;
- It enables free group video calls right from the browser, with breakout rooms and polls;
- It’s possible to create audio and video playlists (YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud…) in the browser, download them and play them offline;
- It allows you to customize your newsfeed based on preferred categories and media outlets.
You may think – It all sounds fun, but I have all my bookmarks on the other browser I’ve been using so far.
Well, you’d be surprised to learn there’s an automatic, 60-second import of saved bookmarks, extensions and even passwords. It’s smooth and oddly satisfying, as if you’ve magically switched to a premium version of your old browser.
But the real question is – Why is Brave the first one to become successful at being everything we ever wanted from a browser?
Because it’s built on the ever-popular idea of a super app.
In other words, its aim isn’t only to serve as a browser but rather to integrate the most common functionalities that we’ve been looking for elsewhere, without being intrusive or too obvious.
It’s safe to say that it’ll meet your expectations if you’re looking for a simple and reliable browser but, at the same time, if you want a more personalized experience, it provides numerous customization tools for appearance and results.
Finally, it gives you a unique opportunity to earn crypto tokens if you do choose to see ads, as well as to integrate your crypto wallet. But we’ll expand on that more in the last section of this article.
How good is Brave compared to other browsers?
If you visit the website of any relevant browser, it’s obvious they’ll say they’re the best.
But the truth is, it’s not that easy to give an answer to that question.
Even if you consider objective parameters, you need to have in mind individual user preferences. So, before we present you with a side-to-side comparison of the most popular browsers, let’s give you an insight into the most important Brave browser statistics:
- It’s mostly used by people aged 24-36 (31.14%), followed by those aged 18-24 (27.73%);
- ¾ of its users are male;
- In August 2022, they reported 57+ million users, with a significant year-on-year increase;
- Despite this fact, Brave has only 1% of the global browser market share;
- It has a higher CTR for ad campaigns (8%) compared to the industry median of just 2%;
- The most popular categories on Brave newsfeed are Video Games & Consoles and News;
- In 2021, Brave bought Talicat open search engine to improve search privacy, and released Brave Wallet in the same year;
- Around 8 million people are using the opportunity of earning through Brave Rewards;
- Approximately 91% of Brave Marketer Podcast listeners turn into subscribers;
- Over 88% of desktop visits on brave.com come from direct traffic.
How does it work?
You start by choosing how often you want to see the ads (from one to ten per hour) and they will occasionally pop up at the bottom of your screen, similar to Slack notifications. However, they’re not intrusive or flashy, and probably won’t bug you as much as ads usually do. In the end, they underline that users should be paid for watching the ads, not the other way around.
You can store BAT as any other crypto asset, via the Brave Wallet. The best part is, you can use BAT to tip the content publishers whose work you admire.
Depending on who you ask, the answer to which browser has the fastest loading speed may vary. Some of them even claim that Brave is faster than Chrome, but most sources agree that it’s definitely among the top 5.
Features | Brave | Chrome | DDG | Edge | Firefox | Safari |
Invasive ads block | ✔ | ~ | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ |
Cross-site trackers block | ✔ | ✖ | ✔ | ~ | ~ | ✖ |
Cookies block | ✔ | ✖ | ✔ | ~ | ✔ | ✔ |
Fingerprinting block | ✔ | ✖ | ~ | ✖ | ~ | ~ |
Malware & phishing protection | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Bounce tracking protection | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ~ | ✖ |
Anonymized network routing | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ |
What can you expect from Brave search results?
You may have heard that Google Chrome Incognito Mode isn’t as private as we thought, and are looking for a more trustworthy option.
Apparently, Brave’s team has put extra effort into upgrading user privacy and here’s how they handle it:
- First things first, Brave doesn’t sell user data to advertisers; moreover, they claim they don’t collect it in the first place;
- Additionally, their search results are based on an independent search index;
- Lastly, they claim not to use algorithms or other secret methods to censor results.
So, how do they rank search results then?
According to their official statement, they rely on anonymous community contributions to refine results, and community-created alternative ranking models to ensure diversity of sources and results.
However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page. This mixing is a means-to-an-end toward 100% independence. For full transparency and to measure Brave’s progress toward that goal, Brave provides a “Results independence” metric. This anonymous calculation shows the % of search results that come from Brave versus these third parties.
Brave’s official statement
In other words, don’t be surprised if Reddit comes up on your first page, which would otherwise be impossible with Google Search.
Moreover, Brave Search relies on Bing for most image and video results and you can also enable to check Google for fallback mixing. However, this option won’t associate your queries with your Google account since Brave (not you) is anonymously checking Google for the same query.
Now, it’s important to emphasize that you could use Brave Search in browsers other than Brave, just as you would with Google or Bing. Just set it as default or visit search.brave.com.
In the same way, you can use other search engines in the Brave Browser.
However, a slight inconvenience for global users is that it’s only available in US and UK English, French, German, and Japanese.
Last but not least, what certainly adds to the variety of results when compared to engines owned by tech giants, is the fact that Brave is open source, built on the open-source Chromium Web core, while their own client code is released under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.