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
