I currently use Brave and am curious about the pros and cons of both since I see many people recommend Firefox.
Firefox.
Brave team has been caught doing sketchy and controversial things over time, and I personally can’t be bothered to support them.
I like how Firefox doesn’t shove crypto shit down my throat nor want to monitorize my web browsing experience at all.
I’m no privacy savant, but I like Firefox better. I think it has the better “modern” interface. It is less buggy on my laptop, has better scrolling to my eye.
From a philosophical perspective I think the web should support more than one rendering engine.
I disable smooth scrolling so my eyes don’t have to follow and wait for it to be done scrolling. The scroll height is ingrained so now, on new machines, when it’s on it annoys me to no end.
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.
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True. OP looked like s/he wanted a simple answer so I just went with the basics, especially as there’s not a noticeable difference in basic browsing performance between the two in their current form (although I think FF is slightly faster right now).
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 obscureabout:configsettings that break the experience of a non privacy concious user
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.
Hardened Firefox (BetterFox user.js config) is my go to. Good browser. Do now want monopoly of Chromium.
Librewolf & mull are my goto
This. I’ve moved to those browsers some time ago and I’m very satisfied. uBO is also a MUST.
Both install it by default so it’s all good, just edit the filter lists
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.
I just wanted to switch also this week but I am wondering can you sync your bookmarks etc. between Librewolf and Mull?
They both use ff sync so yeah
Thank you sir!
Ehh…not sure yet 😅
How does betterFox compare to arkenfox?
betterfox does have privacy resist fingerprint on, so breaks less site.
It required less manual tweaking, better defaults for me and many people around.
I love how much you can pimp out Firefox with custom CSS style sheets. However, the number one reason I use it is to show the internet that not everyone wants to just surrender to Chromium (and Google). If I could donate specifically to Firefox development, I would.
I have Brave as a backup and still use it from time to time. It’s a good browser. Privacy-wise it is probably better than vanilla Firefox but inferior to Librewolf (a security-hardened Firefox fork).
Hardend Firefox in incognito or just Librewolf with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and Decentraleyes add-ons along with Mullvad + NextDNS is the best combination. If you can also have pi-hole it can also do a good job at blocking trackers…NextDNS seems to do the job for me though. I use Mull browser on android.
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No, you’re not a bother at all; this is very informative! I don’t personally have the time to delve into the technicalities of why something may be outdated or maybe even redundant. I just kind of follow what has worked for me, as I want to be as anonymous as I can be while browsing the web. Furthermore, I will change Decentraleyes out for LocalCDN; I appreciate this tip.
Firefox has one of my favorite privacy extensions that creates containers to group your tabs into, and I haven’t found an equivalent for chrome based browsers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/
But if you like crypto, I’d go with Brave. Firefox recently broke a bunch of browser wallet / hardware wallet integrations by ditching U2F on the latest release without giving any of the big wallet programmers a heads up.
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.
This is the way.:)
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
It is for the most part but truthfully it can be a pain for users who don’t want to configure it due to some of its privacy protecting defaults.
I installed it after hearing about it here and use it as my main browser on my systems.
The things that stand out that may not be pleasant for every user is:
Sync is disabled by default. It can be toggled really easily in settings though, so it’s barely an issue.
All browser history, cookies, etc are cleared by default on close. This can be an annoyance for many and I disabled it.
Locked into light themes due to some vulnerability with dark ones(?). I was trying to change the theme and saw a warning that light themes are enforced.
I’m sure there are more pro-privacy options that can be kind of an inconvenience to those not interested in digging in settings.
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).
Thank you. I will will have to check into it.
Firefox is the only choice for me at this point.
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.
but I still don’t think they are very trustworthy
How so? Why is that?
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.
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.
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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.
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Firefox recently passed chrome on the speedometer benchmark
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.
Librewolf > Mullvad > Brave > Firefox
According to the tests
Edit: added Mullvad
The tests are made by a Brave employee. Biased enough that everyone shouldn’t trust the results.
But the “biased results” are
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Open source, you can review them for yourself, adjust them, and run them. I have reviewed the tests and they look good to me.
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The results don’t put Brave in first.
Beyond attacking the source, what critiques do you have of the tests themselves and the code? Are there any tests that should have been included, excluded, or altered to reduce bias?
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The tests are open source, I don’t think there’s any bias in the results.
Get Librewolf
I’m trying to use Librewolf but still have Brave installed and am forced to use it frequently due to the growing list of websites that don’t work with a hardened Firefox. It sux, but while chromium variants are used by the vast majority of people, that list will keep growing
Edit: Braves defingerprinting is way better than Firefox, especially if you want to use dark mode
