18
votes
Brave Origin, a paid, premium version of Brave is now available
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- Title
- New Brave Origin premium experience offers users a minimalist version of the Brave browser | Brave
- Published
- Jun 4 2026
- Word count
- 1792 words
Friendly reminder that Brave CEO Brendan Eich is a homophobe, anti-vaxist and science denier.
There are plenty of other browsers out there.
Not to be that guy but can you recommend another browser?
I feel like I hear bad things for just about any browser. Chrome is owned by Google and they inject all kinds of nasty tracking and AI stuff, and Firefox isn’t what it used to be. I use brave because it seems free from asshole influence but I guess not.
You don't have much of a choice: if it's not Firefox, it's Chromium. I'd say that Firefox is the less bad option. I also use it on Android, or Vivaldi exclusively for the few PWAs that I want to install.
I'm also not too keen on using forks. Your web browser is the single most critical application on your system, and even though Mozilla and Google suck, they certainly don't mess around security. I don't have that kind of trust for amateurs, as well-intentioned as they are.
Note that Safari is also not Chromium. The Blink renderer in Chromium is descended from WebKit (Safari), but they've heavily diverged since Google forked it. They have completely different JavaScript runtimes as well (JavaScriptCore in Safari vs Chromium's V8).
Arguably, Apple's denial of non-WebKit browsers on iOS is the only thing standing in the way of Google having an Internet Explorer level monopoly, and companies only targeting chromium for everything. If that were opened up, there would likely be a major push to normalize installing Chrome, just like the situation where Mac users tend to install Chrome immediately.
This is a great summarization of my feelings as well.
Zen Browser (a fork of Firefox) works great for me.
Helium is nice if you want a minimal Chrome experience without all the bullshit
Vivaldi is also interesting, though I haven't used it much and don't know how good it is privacy-wise.
About Vivaldi:
It's partially open source. The UI is closed source, while the rest is open source. (For me this isn't really an issue, but worth pointing out)
I might be misremembering so put here a grain of salt, but privacy wise the browser calls home every day with a randomized ID and info about the CPU. They say that it's only meant for them to know how many people are using the browser.
I don't know how it is nowadays since they updated the UI, but last year I noticed that this browser was "hungrier" than other browsers. My work PC's hardware was abysmal so I could feel this, while other browsers like Brave, Chrome, firefox and even edge worked fine and felt less demanding.
I use Vivaldi for whatever little that datum is worth.
I switched to vivaldi as my main browser in 2023, and absolutely love it. There are so many things you can customize.. the only thing I'm having issues with currently are tab groups, for some reason dragging tabs into / out of groups is massively bugged.
Count me as a very satisfied Zen user.
I haven't found answer for this, but since it's a Firefox fork, does it support sync? If I used it on my PC but kept using FF on Android, would everything stay synced?
I use Firefox accounts with Zen just fine.
That's lovely to know, thanks!
I use Firefox day to day although I am also experimenting with Zen (Firefox fork), which seems a bit more like Olde Firefox. Opera also gets booted up from time to time. People like Vivaldi but I haven't tried.
I mean yeah, everyone has issues to some extent. But Eich is very publicly a pretty large asshole and has been for a long time. Also Brave have always been on the wrong side of the asshole fence, frankly. I remember Tom Scott un-recommending them years ago when they forced their weird crypto thing onto him without his permission.
I've used Firefox for years myself, but decided recently to give Waterfox, a fork of the browser, a go since Mozilla has allegedly been using user data to train AI without users' consent. It's been a decent experience. I would recommend it.
Can you source this?
I know the new CEO talked about including AI features in the browser, but they very quickly came out and said that all "AI" things will be able to be turned off, and also all of said features are opt-in. Even just looking at my settings in FF152 I have all of that stuff turned off
I cannot, which is why I only used 'allegedly' ; an acquaintance told me about it and I remember her sourcing the info but I wouldn't be able to bring it up again. I added that to provide context as to why I'd switched but maybe it was a bit zealous... apologies.
I also switched to Waterfox as my main since they've stayed away from AI/etc so far. It's a nice fork. Sync still works, easy to move profile over, etc
Tried Zen, wasn't a fan. LibreWolf was a consideration but a bit too overkill for me privacy/security wise, etc
If I have to use a Chromium browser in a pinch, I use Helium
No longer interested in the vanilla corporate versions of browsers anymore, basically forks all the way down for me
You didn’t mention if you’re PC or Mac but if Mac…
Orion - WebKit-based (same engine as Safari) but with Chrome/Firefox extensions. Been using this for a while now and it’s really matured.
Zen - Firefox fork like others have mentioned
Vivaldi - I use this at work and have no complaints
Apologies, I am on Mac as well.
I’ll take a look at these. Thanks!
I'm using Vivaldi on Mac. I like it because it syncs between all my devices for bookmarks and browser state. I use that feature a lot. Macbook, Mac, Linux laptop, iPad, phone, can just pick up browsing on whichever device I want.
I "defected" from Firefox some time back and wanted to move to a Chromium fork. Vivaldi was the fork of choice.
I mean...what are you worried about? It works and does anything I've ever needed.
Brave's crypto stuff also gives me the ick so I avoid using it. I use Vivaldi since it at least doesn't seem to try to mine my data, and is available as a flatpak.
I'm less concerned with open source than leadership ethics, especially since any features I like in Brave can be done via extensions.
Brave was also caught injecting their own referral links into crypto urls. If they do that, what else are they going to try?
Here - CPOMagazine
Brave is a browser whose popularity I'm honestly baffled by. It's chromium, it constantly shoves AI and crypto in your face, bombards you with its own ads, on top of the shady stuff it's been reported to do like selling your data and subbing affiliate links. Even if you don't wanna use Firefox, it makes no sense to use this particular browser.
I use Firefox as my daily driver and see no reason to change, especially since I have all the extensions I need installed and working well. Eight extensions... is that a lot compared to you guys?
I have Waterfox as a backup, and have it set up in as complete a privacy mode as I can, with nothing saved from each session.
On the off chance I run into a site that requires Chrome or a Chromium based browser, I keep Ungoogled Chromium installed, but rarely use it.
Not sure I see the need for a paid browser.
I use Firefox Android out of idealogy (and sync), but I believe Brave Android to be the better choice and I bought Origin just for that (even though I rarely use it).
GrapheneOS wrote that
I believe that statement is a few years old already, so I'm not sure how much of it is out-of-date. I think it's clear though that Firefox Android's maintenance is not as good as Chrome.
As for other browsers, I believe most community Chrome forks (eg. Ungoogled Chromium, Cromite) are not in Play Store? I tried looking at Bromite at some point, but the fact that you have to know that you need to move to Cromite because your browser is dead make me feel like Brave is the better choice, especially now that you don't have to put up with antifeatures. If you require sync like I do, then those forks either don't have one or it kept the Google's sync.
I am one of those weird people who almost never get online with my phone. My close-up vision is poor, and I rarely have reading glasses with me, so using a phone for the things most people do is just not convenient or comfortable for me. I do use Firefox on Android, but so infrequently, it hardly counts.
My opinions about browsers are based on useage on my desktop computers, and most of those are running Linux Mint.
I find it baffling how they can constantly shove all the worst things into a browser and then get people who not only evangelize it but are now dumb enough to pay for it.
Yeah... I'll stick to Firefox.
Why would I pay money for a chromium-based browser? I mean honestly why would I pay money for any browser when they're all harvesting and selling my personal information but especially why would I pay for a worse version of Google Chrome?
I think the idea is that by paying, they have a more traditional revenue source than data harvesting. They offer a service, you pay for it with money.
If you had a lawn care service, and you never paid but they got to empty your mailbox every day in return, it might be nice to find a company that just does the mowing in return for cash.
Of course, if they take the cash AND still take your mail, then it’s not such a good deal.
And if they are only taking cash from you, but taking the mail of other customers, then it feels a little like extortion.
Previous discussion: https://tildes.net/~tech/1tuv/brave_origin_nightly_a_paid_bloat_free_version_of_brave