Frequently Asked Questions

No, the Brave browser will always be free to use—you don’t need to pay to block third-party ads and tracking from the websites you visit. Note that by default, the Brave browser will show certain privacy-preserving, first-party ads within the Brave browser and Brave Search engine; the browser-based ads can be toggled off, while Brave Search ads can be disabled by upgrading to Brave Search premium.

We do not have access to identifiable user data. Any data aggregated from Brave Ads campaigns is anonymized and used only for accounting and reporting. This data cannot be mapped back to devices or user identities of any kind. Learn more.

We do not use the business model of taking annual fees from advertisers to allow their third-party ads (and trackers for confirmation) to pass unblocked on websites. Instead, we offer a privacy-preserving alternative via Brave Ads. Learn more.

The Brave browser is developed in the open, and any change that could affect security or privacy is subject to strict review to ensure it aligns with our commitment to privacy. We document what the browser connects to (network requests) and how it deviates from Chromium in ways that strengthen privacy.

Brave is based on the same Chromium source code as Chrome, but unlike Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, Brave doesn’t make out-of-the-box background connections to Google. We’ve disabled Google Accounts and Chrome sync, removed Chrome-specific telemetry and reporting code, and made further changes that strengthen privacy—removing or disabling features that send data to third parties, proxying necessary requests to hide user identity, and modifying APIs to reduce fingerprinting. These deviations create a more privacy-preserving Chromium foundation reflecting our “can’t be evil” approach that avoids collecting personal data in the first place and precludes abuse. This is complemented by Brave-specific systems such as STAR for anonymous telemetry, support for privacy-enhancing standards like Global Privacy Control (GPC), and privacy-preserving ad reporting.

Independent reviews have rated Brave extremely highly when it comes to privacy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Cover Your Tracks test rates Brave’s Web tracking protections as strong, and research from Professor Douglas J. Leith and colleagues at Trinity College Dublin—respected for their long-standing work on Web and mobile privacy—found Brave “by far the most private” among major browsers.

By default, the Brave Shields feature blocks third-party tracking scripts (trackers) and the third-party ads that depend on them. You can allow some (or all) ads and trackers by adjusting global or per-site Shields settings.

Separately, Brave users can choose to opt into Brave Rewards, which includes privacy-preserving ads that do not track you, and that pay you a revenue share to support the creators you like. The browser-based Brave Ads can be toggled off as desired.

Together, the Brave Rewards / Brave Ads features create a private and anonymous ad system. These ads mostly come from partners and advertisers who work with the Brave sales and business development teams; in limited cases, some ads will come from Brave directly, as a way to market new features to our users.

This improves on the “classic” digital advertising model in a few key ways:

• Any ad matching happens on the user’s device; ads are privacy-preserving.
• There is no profiling of individual users, and measures are in place to avoid collecting any identifying information. All ad metrics (such as impressions) are collected only at an aggregate level, and verified anonymously.
• Browser-based Brave Ads are entirely optional, and those users who do opt in to Brave Rewards can earn a cut of the ad revenue in the form of the Basic Attention Token (BAT).
• BAT can be donated to creators and publishers to help fund the Web.

Learn more about the Basic Attention Token.

Extensions face API and performance limits. Additionally, popular extension stores often host malicious counterfeit extensions, which have led to millions of infected users.

Building our own browser lets us put our best foot forward on matters of speed and privacy. Building and maintaining a browser is a lot more complicated than an extension, but it pays off by letting us protect our users unbeholden to Google or other owners of extension platforms. For example, Brave’s ad and tracker blocking is not affected by Google’s deprecation of Manifest Version 2.

As mentioned above, the browser knows almost everything you do. It knows what sites you visit, how much time you spend on them, what you look at, what is visible “above the fold” and not occluded by opaque layers, what searches you make, what groups of tabs you open while researching major purchases, etc.

Only the browser, after HTTPS terminates and secure pages are decrypted, has all of your private data needed to analyze user intent. Our auditable, open-source browser code protects this intent data on the client device. Our servers have no access to this data in the clear, nor do we have decryption keys.

While we will block third-party ads and trackers, we don’t block first-party ads by default. The privacy problem with the advertising ecosystem is related to third-party advertising. Note that Shields does have an option called “Aggressive mode” which can also block first-party ads, but this mode may negatively impact the functionality of some websites.

Brave Rewards is a feature in Brave that allows you to earn tokens (called Basic Attention Tokens or “BAT”) for certain ads you see in Brave, and gives you multiple ways to support websites and content creators online. You can learn more about Brave Rewards, here.

Your BAT earnings are deposited into a payout account that you connect to your Brave Rewards profile. A payout account is an account with one of our custodial account provider partners (like Uphold, Gemini, among others), or self-custody Web3/crypto address like a Solana address. So, even if you lose access to your device, your BAT will still be in your custodial account or at your Web3/crypto address.

Brave Rewards is available on Android devices and iOS. However, on iOS, due to certain App Store policies, you won’t be able to connect a payout account or earn BAT at this time. Learn more about Brave Rewards and iOS devices.

Each installation of Brave (or user profile within Brave) has its own Brave Rewards profile. So, if you install Brave on two different computers, you will have at least 2 different Brave Rewards profiles.

You can connect multiple Brave Rewards profiles to a single payout account, allowing you to consolidate your earnings into one and use the shared BAT balance across your profiles.

Basic Attention Token. It is a utility token based on the Ethereum technology that can also be used as a unit of account between advertisers, creators, and users in our new, blockchain-based digital advertising and services platform.

Ownership of the tokens carry no rights other than the right to use them as a means to obtain services on the BAT platform, and to enable usage of and interaction with the platform, if successfully completed and deployed.

The tokens do not represent or confer any ownership right or stake, share or security or equivalent rights, or any right to receive future revenue shares, intellectual property rights or any other form of participation in or relating to the BAT platform, and/or Brave and its affiliates. The tokens are not refundable and are not intended to be a digital currency, security, commodity or any other kind of financial instrument.

You can learn more about Basic Attention Token on the Basic Attention Token website.

If you’re using the Auto-Contribute feature in Brave Rewards and would like to exclude a particular site or creator from receiving contributions from you, navigate to your Brave Rewards settings (brave://rewards) and remove them from the list under the Auto-Contribute section.

Since your BAT and other funds are stored inside your custodial account or at your Web3/crypto address, keeping your funds safe is mostly a matter of keeping access to the login details of your custodial account safe, or your private keys safe. Brave does not have access to your custodial account or Web3/crypto private keys.

If you use a custodial account as your payout account for Brave Rewards, you also authorize your Brave browser to have some access to your custodial account through your provider’s API. Every so often, you’ll be automatically logged out for security. In addition, certain actions may require the browser to be reauthorized, such as sending more than a certain amount in contributions. This helps limit theft of funds in case someone gains unauthorized access to your device.

All automatic contributions, such as those made using the Auto-Contribute feature, are anonymized such that no one can link these transactions to a specific user’s Brave Rewards profile or browsing activity, thanks to the extensive use of privacy preserving cryptographic protocols.

If you make an on-demand contribution from your custodial account, your chosen custodial account provider may be able to see some details of your transaction.

For more information, please read our Privacy Policy.

The BAT website contains the terms of service for Brave Rewards.

You can edit which sites you’re contributing to via Auto-Contribute or recurring contributions you’ve set up by going to brave://rewards.

Earlier versions of Brave Rewards used a 24-word or 16-word recovery key that could be used to restore a Brave Rewards profile. Backing up and restoring using a recovery key is no longer supported in recent versions of Brave.

You can find these details in our Privacy Policy.

Brave is currently partnered with Uphold, Gemini, BitFlyer and ZebPay as custodial account providers. Brave’s custodial partners are third-party services that allow users to store and manage their BAT, including the BAT users earn from Brave Rewards.

Note that support for connecting a custodial account to Brave Rewards varies by region. You can find a list of supported regions by custodial account provider here.

A “creator” or “publisher” is someone who owns a website or an account on a user-generated content platform like YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, Twitch, Vimeo, etc. We prefer to use the word “creator” as a catchall term to mean anyone who creates or publishes content online.

By signing up with Brave Creators, you can receive contributions from Brave users who enable the Brave Rewards feature!

If you are a creator, start by signing up for a Brave Creators account here. Once you open a Brave Creators account, you can register your various accounts and websites with your Brave Creators account. This is the first step to begin receiving contributions from Brave Rewards users.

A “Verified Creator” is a website, account, or channel that can receive contributions from Brave Rewards users. For example, a YouTube channel can appear as a “Verified Creator” to Brave Rewards users. When Brave Rewards users visit a Verified Creator site, channel, or account, they will see a blue checkmark next to the BAT icon in the URL bar of their Brave browser.

In order to have your websites, accounts, and channels appear as verified to Brave Rewards users and display a blue checkmark, you need to (1) register your website, account, or channel with your Brave Creators account, and (2) connect an account from one of our custodial partners to your Brave Creators account. Connecting an account from one of our custodial partners gives us and Brave Rewards users a place to send you your contributions (which come in the form of Basic Attention Tokens or “BAT”). To learn more, see our support article on how to become a Verified Creator.

Credit card interchange fees may appear to total only a bit more than 2%, but due to chargebacks over fraud, merchants pay a heavy hidden fee. Also, our fee helps cover the cost of the infrastructure that allows Brave Rewards users to support Brave Creators. It is our intention to minimize those fees as we grow and realize economies of scale.

As a Brave Creator, you’ll be able to receive on-demand contributions from Brave Rewards Users, as well as a monthly Brave Creators payout. More specifically, Brave Rewards users can send on-demand contributions (which are like tips) directly to you, which you’ll receive instantly. Then, each month, you’ll also receive a monthly Brave Creators payout, which includes BAT from Brave Rewards users who use the “Auto-Contribute” feature, plus any other BAT that Brave may pay out to you each month on behalf of Brave Rewards users. Learn more about how Brave Rewards works from a user’s perspective.

Given the anonymous and privacy-preserving nature of Brave Rewards, Brave Creators currently cannot see who contributed to them. However, the Brave Rewards interface lets users easily make a tweet on X (formerly Twitter) about their on-demand contributions right after they make them.

Monthly Creators payouts are sent to your connected custodial account each month, usually around the middle of the month. On-demand contributions sent by Brave Rewards users arrive in your connected custodial account right away.

You can only send contributions to “Verified Creators”. Verified Creators are sites or channels that have registered with Brave Creators and have completed the steps to be eligible to receive contributions from users.

In some cases, a Verified Creator may still be unable to receive contributions from you. This can happen because there is no available contribution method between you and the Verified Creator (for example, because the Verified Creator isn’t set up to receive contributions from the custodial account provider you use). The Brave Rewards interface will indicate whether a contribution to a website or channel is possible.

Previous versions of Brave

Previously, when a website or channel could not receive a contribution from a user (either because the creator was not a Verified Creator, or because there was no available contribution method), the Brave browser would set up a “pending contribution” that would retry automatically for 90 days. If within the 90 day period the browser detected that the pending contribution could be made to the creator, then it would be processed. No balance was ever deducted from the user until the contribution was actually processed. A user could always cancel a pending contribution before 90 days had elapsed.

Before that (until version 0.58.21, released on January 11, 2019), browsers with Brave Rewards enabled could contribute BAT to websites and creators even if they were not registered with Brave Creators. Brave would then hold contributed funds for those creators in escrow until the creator had registered with Brave Creators.

Brave Software is a privately held, for-profit company. We generate revenue in several ways, including:

• The sale of New Tab Takeovers, Brave Search Ads, and other Brave Ads (the first-party ad units that users opt into via our privacy-preserving ad platform). Note that opted-in users receive 70% of this ad revenue back in the form of BAT.
• Subscriptions to our premium products: Brave Firewall + VPN, Brave Talk Premium, Brave Leo Premium, and Brave Search Premium.
• A 1% fee on fiat-to-crypto transactions (through onramp partners) in Brave Wallet, and a nominal fee on creator tips and auto-contributions made via Brave Rewards.
• Subscriptions to our Search API.
• Partnership deals (for example with platforms integrated into the Brave browser).

For more information, check out Brave’s transparency report.

In 2015, before we released to users, the Brave browser actually was built on the Gecko engine. However, early on our engineering team realized that Gecko lacked important product features, led to more Web compatibility (webcompat) issues, and overall had poorer performance. Our first full release of Brave was built on Electron, but we found that this engine slowed development, which in turn led to broken features. We then developed Brave Core, a Chromium fork, and have developed all subsequent releases for Android and desktop on this core. Chromium leads to far fewer bugs, offers full support for extensions, and has more frequent upgrades and better code-sharing with Android. Chromium powers many other browsers on the market, including Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Vivaldi. Chrome’s market power coupled with Chromium’s WebKit lineage (especially on mobile), makes Chromium the de facto standard. It is by far the best foundation on which Brave can build its privacy, security, performance, and custom-feature enhancements. At this time there are no plans to rebase Brave on an alternative engine like Gecko, as doing so would only lead to performance and experience degradations for our users.

Brave operates web services hosted on brave.com, basicattentiontoken.org, brave.io, brave.app, bravesoftware.com and their subdomains. If you are asked to download Brave software or login to Brave on other sites, please beware that this could be a phishing attack. You can report Brave impersonators to security[at]brave.com.

No, Chromium is not the same as Google Chrome.

Chromium is the open-source browser engine “…that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all users to experience the web.” This engine powers many of the world’s most popular browsers, such as Brave, but also Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Vivaldi.

Google Chrome, by contrast, is the Web browser built by Google.

Think of Chromium as a browsing foundation that anyone could build on. Brave takes this foundation and:

• Removes parts that could be harmful to user privacy or security
• Builds in new enhancements to privacy and performance
• Layers on unique features that create new ways to engage with content online

While Brave is based on the same Chromium source code as Chrome, Brave doesn’t make connections to Google in the background. We’ve disabled Google Accounts and Sync, and removed all Chrome-specific telemetry and reporting code. Without these protections, Chromium could be used to enable websites to use online tracking and surveillance; it’s these outbound connections to Google services (enabled in Google’s implementation of Chromium) that give Google information about your usage and browsing.

It’s common for browser vendors to build on a common foundation. For example, this is similar to how on iOS mobile devices, every browser is Safari based (due to Apple’s requirement that browser vendors must use WkWebView to build iOS mobile browsers), but the privacy, performance, and features of those browsers vary greatly.

Brave is formally a Chromium “fork,” and we now develop all releases of the Brave browser for Android and desktop on this open-source core. The Chromium engine leads to far fewer bugs (thanks in no small part to the fact that companies and developers around the world are contributing to this open-source project). Brave is among those contributing code upstream to the Chromium project. Brave also maintains adblock filters via the Easylist project, a list which many other open-source projects (including Chromium itself) use for ad filtering.

Chromium offers full support for desktop extensions, and has more frequent upgrades and better code-sharing between desktop and mobile versions. It is by far the best foundation on which Brave can build its privacy, security, performance, and custom-feature enhancements. Brave deviates from this open-source foundation in a number of key ways, which allows Brave to be user-first; offer far better privacy and performance; and introduce great custom features you won’t find in any other browser. There is no business relationship between Brave and Google, or between the Brave browser and Google Chrome.

As mentioned above, the browser knows almost everything you do. It knows what sites you visit, how much time you spend on them, what you look at, what is visible “above the fold” and not occluded by opaque layers, what searches you make, what groups of tabs you open while researching major purchases, etc.

Only the browser, after HTTPS terminates and secure pages are decrypted, has all of your private data needed to analyze user intent. Our auditable open source browser code protects this intent data on the client device. Our server side has no access to this data in the clear, nor does it have decryption keys. We do not run a MitM proxy or VPN service.

Updated 2022-06-23 — The paragraph below describes functionality that was never shipped and was never live to users. We’ve left it visible for the sake of transparency:

We provide signals to the browser to help it make good decisions about what preferences and intent signals to expose to maximize user, publisher and advertiser value. Each ad request is anonymous, and exposes only a small subset of the user’s preferences and intent signals to prevent “fingerprinting” the user by a possibly unique set of tags.