I currently use Brave and am curious about the pros and cons of both since I see many people recommend Firefox.
I use Firefox, but only because I really don’t want to support Chromium’s monopoly. I do think that Chromium based browsers are better though.
I do think that Chromium based browsers are better though.
In which sense?
Self fulfilling prophesy, since some developers think so they only optimize their websites for chromium which in turn makes it true.
But in reality Firefox is perfectly capable and performant enough for everything.
firefox recently even caught up to chrome on the speedometer benchmark, which is nice.
This is not backed up by any data, but for me the experience on Chromium based browsers always seems faster and smoother, especially on modern, JS heavy sites.
Also, I’m a sucker for feature rich applications and I really like how much stuff Vivaldi and Brave have built-in. This is extremely subjective though and I know there are many people who consider all of this a terrible bloat.
Brave is great out of the box experience with a lot of privacy toggles enabled by default. Firefox can be hardened a bit more, but it requires more of a user input. Both are great options, so it mostly comes down to which engine you prefer, Blink or Gecko.
Some people also choose to use Firefox for a simple reason if it not based on Chromium to avoid monopolization.
Nobody has mentioned librewolf, which is a fantastic out of the box privacy browser. It’s a Firefox fork.
Is it truly just download and use?
I ask because I am not a tech person. I do not understand how to read or write code, what settings are the ones you need to safely change, etc.
I would happily try Librewolf if the browser is as simple as downloading
For the most part it really is. A lot of what it does I would do anyway, but it has that by default, which saves a lot of time for me every time I install it (which is quite often due to my endless distro-hopping). Not everything works perfectly, and a lot of that is intentional (such as spoofing the timezone). I would definitely recommend giving it a shot, and if something doesn’t work well you can probably just turn it off (and they’ll probably explain how in their FAQ).
If you left chrome thinking brave is not google, both are from companies made for profit. Both are based on chromium. You left one ad company for another.
I recently made the move to librewolf(windows) and mull(android). Essentially just Firefox but with more protection. Super easy switch, hardly notice a difference so far.
This. I’ve moved to those browsers some time ago and I’m very satisfied. uBO is also a MUST.
Oh boy. This is a topic where you pretty much can only lose no matter what you say because everyone has a different opinion. Here’s mine.
Imo both are good browsers but they both have their advantages and disadvantages. From my experience Firefox uses telemetry more than Brave when I look at the DNS logs. It needs more tuning to be (more) privacy respecting. Brave does a better job out of the box.
On the other hand there’s uBlock Origin. You might have heard of Manifest v3 which is going to kill uBO for all Chromium based browsers. Yes, Brave has its own adblocker but it’s not as good as uBO and I doubt it ever will be. Also uBO offers better protection in Firefox than in Chromium based browsers. Though I’m not sure how relevant this is now since the article is over two years old.
I do have to say that I think most people trust Firefox (or Mozilla) too much. Maybe Mozilla respects your privacy more than other browser developers but I still don’t think they are very trustworthy. The problem is that you don’t have much of a choice. Either you trust any browser developer or you go off of the internet or you develop your own browser.
So for now you’re fine with either browser but when there will be no support for Manifest v3 on Chromium based browsers anymore you should go with Firefox. Firefox is never a bad choice, even now.
There are many reasons. One of the reasons is this sneaky one.
Then there’s more than enough telemetry Mozilla makes use of in Firefox you need to disable in about:config where most users don’t even look. Lookup the following options:
- browser.tabs.crashReporting.sendReport
- datareporting.policy.dataSubmissionEnabled
- datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled
- toolkit.coverage.endpoint.base
- toolkit.coverage.opt-out
- toolkit.telemetry.coverage.opt-out
Everytime you start Firefox it sends your location to Mozilla. Lookup these options:
- Region.current
- Region.home
- browser.region.update.enabled
- browser.region.network.url
These are just a few things Mozilla does and pretty much nobody talks about because they are considered trustworthy. But let’s be real here: Trust is good, control is better. That’s why I made some research about Mozilla and found out about the above things.
Brave is not your friend - if they’re willing to violate copyright law by secretly scraping websites and then selling the content in their AI, I’m sure they’re willing to sell your data if the price is high enough (if they aren’t already).
Firefox, on the other hand, has been the most trusted browser since dial-up, and is run by a non-profit. It’s an easy choice for me.
Firefox is a little more complicated than that. Yes, the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit, however it’s subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation is not. It’s better than Google but like all things, it’s worth asking where the money comes from.
Brave is open source. You can review and compile from source if you have privacy concerns.
To be completely fair, Mozilla is no angel. They installed extensions in people’s browsers without asking for permission, for example. No thanks.
Librewolf is my recommended go-to from a privacy perspective. And Brave is not horrible. If you look at Brave the company, they aren’t any worse than Mozilla the company.
And if you look at privacy features from a purely test driven point of view, Brave is better than Firefox, and Librewolf is better than both.
Finally someone that is being objective here!
If I had to suggest a browser to a non techie person I’d definitely tell them to use Brave since it’s the best middle ground between full privacy to the point of clunkiness and, well… Chrome.
It is still a little invasive by shoving features/ads in your face (wallet, videoconferencing web app, sponsored backgrounds, etc.), but they’re less armful than other options and easier to turn off than slightly obscure about:config settings that break the experience of a non privacy concious user
