I’ve been using Brave for the past three or so years but I do know that Linux/privacy enthusiasts tend to swear by Firefox. Wanted to get people’s thoughts on this topic to see if I should be making a potential switch. Thanks!

  • Brave is more secure in terms of security. Security and safety are two entirely different attributes from a technical pov. And privacy and security are also not the same, though privacy is greatly impacted without security as you implied.

    Firefox is more private than Brave but less secure. Neither is necessarily safer than the other, it depends on how much either app tends to misbehave within the constraints of your own use case. Since the use cases are different (privacy vs. security), it’s harder to compare safety on an even playing field.

      • Exhibit A: The Tor Browser, which focuses on maximizing privacy, is based on Firefox rather than Chromium. They upstream a lot of their major stuff to regular Firefox.

        Exhibit B: Firefox therefore has privacy features that Chromium-based browsers just do not have, like first-party isolation or letterboxing for example.

        Brave’s preconfiguration is a lot more private than Firefox out of the box, but hardened* Firefox is more private than Brave even with extra work put in.

        *: Not just configuration (Arkenfox) but also patches. Like Librewolf (better) or Mullvad Browser (even better) or straight up Tor Browser (best).