Key Takeaways
- Brave browser uses 44% less CPU and 28% less memory than Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox.
- Brave completes page loads 20% faster and uses 26% less inbound and 39% less outbound data.
- The browser’s ad-blocking feature significantly reduces background processes and network requests.
Brave browser has outperformed its competitors in a series of benchmarks, according to the company’s own testing. The results show that Brave uses significantly fewer system resources while also loading webpages faster.
According to Brave’s tests, the browser uses 44% less CPU and 28% less memory compared to Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox. Additionally, Brave completes page loads 20% faster, receiving 26% less inbound data and sending 39% less outbound data.
In terms of CPU usage, Brave averaged around 33%, while Chrome, Edge, and Firefox used 47%, 53%, and 78% respectively. Memory consumption was also lower, with Brave using approximately 1.2GB of memory compared to 1.75GB for Chrome, 1.62GB for Edge, and 1.65GB for Firefox.
The browser’s ad-blocking feature is cited as one of the main reasons for its lower resource usage. By preventing advertisements, analytics scripts, tracking pixels, and other third-party requests from loading, Brave has fewer background processes and network requests to handle.
Page loading performance was also measured, with Brave completing full webpage loads in approximately 4.4 seconds, compared to 5.1 seconds for Chrome, 5.3 seconds for Firefox, and 6 seconds for Edge. The gap was much smaller when measuring Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which tracks when the main visible content of a webpage appears. Both Brave and Chrome averaged around 2.4 seconds, while Edge and Firefox were only slightly slower at approximately 2.5 seconds.
Network data usage was also lower in Brave. The browser received approximately 4.4MB of data per webpage, compared to 4.8MB for Chrome, 6.3MB for Firefox, and 6.8MB for Edge. For outbound data, Brave sent an average of 0.18MB per page, compared to 0.25MB for Firefox, 0.30MB for Edge, and the highest outbound traffic at around 0.34MB for Chrome.
Brave carried out the benchmarks on an Apple Mac Mini with an M2 chip and 8GB of memory, running macOS 26.5.1. The company tested the landing pages of the 50 most popular websites, based on Brave Search statistics. Each website was tested 10 times, using clean browser profiles for every run. The browser versions used were Brave 1.92.139, Chrome 150, Microsoft Edge 150, and Firefox 146.
While Brave conducted the tests itself, the company has published details about its testing setup and methodology, allowing other researchers or users to reproduce and verify the results. However, the results should still be viewed with some caution due to the self-conducted nature of the tests.
