Brave has published a new round of desktop browser benchmarks claiming its browser uses significantly fewer system resources than Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox while also loading pages faster.
According to Brave’s testing, the browser used 44% less CPU, 28% less memory, and 10% less energy on average compared with the three competing browsers. It also completed page loads 20% faster while transferring 26% less inbound data and 39% less outbound data.
The biggest difference was in CPU use. Brave averaged about 33% CPU usage, while Chrome used 47%, Edge 53%, and Firefox 78%. For memory, Brave used about 1.2 GB, compared to 1.75 GB for Chrome, 1.62 GB for Edge, and 1.65 GB for Firefox.
Brave also says its built-in ad and tracker blocking is a big reason for these results. By stopping ads, analytics scripts, tracking pixels, and other third-party requests from loading, the browser has less network traffic and less work to do.
In page-loading tests, Brave took about 4.4 seconds to fully load a page. Chrome took 5.1 seconds, Firefox 5.3 seconds, and Edge 6 seconds.
However, when measuring Largest Contentful Paint, which is when the main content appears, Brave and Chrome both averaged about 2.4 seconds, with Edge and Firefox just behind at 2.5 seconds.
This means Brave’s main advantage comes after the main content is visible, since there are fewer background ads, trackers, analytics requests, and delayed scripts to process.
Network usage showed a similar trend. Brave received about 4.4 MB of data per page, while Chrome got 4.8 MB, Firefox 6.3 MB, and Edge 6.8 MB. For outbound traffic, Brave averaged 0.18 MB, compared to 0.25 MB for Firefox, 0.30 MB for Edge, and 0.34 MB for Chrome.
The tests used an Apple Mac Mini with an M2 chip and 8 GB of memory, running macOS 26.5.1. Brave tested the landing pages of the 50 most popular websites, based on Brave Search stats, and repeated each test ten times with clean browser profiles.
The tested versions were Brave 1.92.139, Chrome 150, Edge 150, and Firefox 146. Just to mention that Brave, Chrome, and Edge all use Chromium, while Firefox uses Mozilla’s Gecko engine.
It’s also important to note that Brave did these tests itself, not an independent group. However, the company shared details about its testing setup and methods, so others can check or repeat the results.
Image credits: Brave
Brendan Eich, is a co-founder and current ceo of brave.
Mozilla Firefox was co-founded by Brendan Eich, who is also known for creating JavaScript. He played a significant role in the development of the browser and the Mozilla project.
Firefox had about 500 million users around 2014, when Brendan Eich left Mozilla. Recent estimates put Firefox at roughly 180–190 million monthly users, meaning it has lost approximately 310–320 million users, or about 60–64%.
Brave has been growing its user base
Year Brave Monthly active users Gain from prior reported figure
2019 8.7 million —
2020 24 million +15.3 million
2021 50+ million +26+ million
2022–2023 Not consistently reported —
2023 65 million +15 million from 2021
2025 101 million +36 million
2026 126.3 million* +25.3 million
Look at all the brave haters, not because the browser is bad, but because the CEO donated to some causes privately and the brave haters didn’t like those causes.
Well, Brave Haters, there’s one thing you can’t argue about and that is that Brave is kicking the s*** out of Firefox.
The CEO donating to a cause is valid reason to not use a project, especially if those causes affect you directly.
I don’t care if the browser is fast or not, they all load my pages at an acceptable speed, so I’m going to use the ones I simply feel good about using.
The best browser based on the firefox I could test in my opinion and the zen browser and librewolf, zen has the look very similar to orion
Brave Origin on Linux is nice. I finally switched from Firefaux.
Brave’s translator is the worst I’ve ever seen…
None of the more than questionable privacy settings in Chromium, such as sharing clipboard content, local network access, etc., are disabled by default under Brave.
They are kind to have released a free version of their browser for Linux users, but in this respect, it’s so much better with Firefox !!
PS
LibreWolf is not bad either
librewolf is what you use when you want websites to break and not work.
You are not very smart. Firefox is a joke. questionable settings is what firefox is all about. Firefox collects data and even put you and your data in studies for big corporations without even asking.
Brave only loads faster because the adblocker is on by default, try installing uBlock on the other browsers then do a retest.
Exactly, stats like this are hugely misleading.
If Brave beats the others when they are using a comparable ad blocker, then these speed comparisons would have some merit. But as it stands, this is an unfair comparison from Brave.
Brave is the gross browser run by the gross people, look at their nasty past. Gross.
They are nasty, Brave is just garbage bloatware that people afraid of pronouns pay money to have removed.
And Firefox’ new mascot has pronouns, which is even more gross.
Nah, Firefox’s new mascot having pronouns is a wonderful thing.
Think Firefox CEO’s financial compensation to be pretty gross.
Too bad Firefox is going down… hope Ladybird can pick up where this once legendary browser used to be.
I believe that yes the brave and really faster, on youtube for example it reproduces the video first and then fully load the page, no other navigor that I know does this.
I use to use Brave just to watch youtube streams/live because there is something with Firefox that google services ask me for captchas all the times and its very slow to load, BUT, I found that Brave write almost the entire stream or something else to disk, not really sure because I didnt research further, but after 1 hour of watching a stream, in Linux, system monitor says that Brave wrote more than 3.5 gb on disk. Since SDD I always check how much data write apps, there is no problem with small or low quantity of writes, but to watch a stream or live, that I can leave the computer playing all the time is not good for my disk, didn’t check again if this still happening with newer versions.
I was never aware of any issue like this and have never noticed this on android or linux and I do alot of streaming. All video is going to have to be loaded to memory to work even if its just temp mem maybe you need more ram?
I stop using Brave more than a year ago and didn’t check it again (disk write), its installed anyway and I use in some cases where a site don’t want to work well with Firefox, but I leave of daily use because of that, I just google it and found a lot of complains about that in 2023, but its seem to no be only Brave, it was a massive cache writing from Chromium also something called “Crashpad”, anyway, I like Firefox, and got Brave only for youtube, now only for some sites but not for daily use. Got plenty of free RAM for my needs and I use to have no more than two tabs at the same time.
ok
“Brave also says its built-in ad and tracker blocking is a big reason for these results.”
And pig’s fly… Firefox is fast as well with uBlock Origin! Thy did of curse not include that.
Any Chromium based browser is crap.
firefox is crap since they want to collect more data with no option to opt in or out during 1st use. They also auto opt-in people to data collection last year with a update. Brave does not need money from google. Firefox built in tracker blocker is crap and can cause issues.
Brave doesn’t need money from Google, just shady affiliate link injection without user consent, and then backtracking only when found out.
you mention one thing that does not exist anymore. what else you got because i could probably write a book about all the retarded crap that mozilla has done that is way worse.
nothing like that is going on now and everything is opt in unlike firefox who own a ad company and gives new users no choice with opt in or opt out and even puts people into corporate studies using the users data without asking. No one is more shady then the ceo and company called mozilla. Heck a update that opts you into data collection without asking not to long ago what kind of crap is that at mozilla. I’m glad firefox user base is shrinking. Seems like the smaller they become as a choice the more money they need to bring in and waste on dumb stuff.
I can say the same but reverse it.
Helium is faster than Brave with uBlock Origin preinstalled running Chromium 152.
Any Firefox based browser is crap.
brave includes ublock origin if you prefer that over there fork or want to use it plus 3 other extensions they maintain brave://settings/extensions/v2. I stopped using firefox over a year ago and will never return. I did not use brave on android for a while but it has improved a lot and it is now my main browser on android also. I do however use duckduckgo over brave search since I kept getting annoying bot checks when using protonvpn which did not happen with duckduckgo. I may retry brave search in future but will avoid if bot checks happen.