How do Brave and Vivaldi compare? Let’s find out.
Brave: Secure, Feature-Rich, Private
Brave has become a popular alternative to Chrome and similar browsers because it is fast, and looks and feels like a conventional browser, but packs quite a punch due to a number of fairly unique security features.
Brave provides strong protection out of the box, mainly thanks to Brave Shields, which blocks ads, scripts, trackers, cross-site cookies, phishing, and fingerprinting. However, the user can tweak Shields as per their liking, customize privacy settings, enable or disable social media blocking, and further enhance Brave’s security by enabling aggressive ad and tracker blocking.
Brave automatically de-AMPs every web page, blocking Google from redirecting your traffic through its own servers and thus preventing it from collecting data. More importantly, the browser also automatically updates all connections from HTTP to HTTPS—the latter is a much safer protocol because it uses strong encryption.
What Brave has, and other browsers do not, is built-in Tor (The Onion Router) connectivity, which is certainly a plus for those who want to keep their privacy but would rather not use Tor’s official browser in addition to Brave.
And since Brave is based on Chromium, it is possible to add pretty much any extension that is available for Chrome, including security-focused extensions such as uBlock Origin and FlowCrypt.
But that’s about as far as you can go in terms of personalizing your Brave experience; this is not exactly a highly-customizable browser.
Vivaldi: Safe, Customizable, Versatile
Launched in 2016, Vivaldi was developed by the former CEO of Opera. However, Vivaldi is also based on the Chromium engine, which, for a start, means it is compatible with most extensions in the Chrome Web Store.
Unlike Brave, Vivaldi is highly-customizable. In fact, this is exactly where it shines. The customization features are not just about appearance and functionality, but also security and privacy.
Vivaldi utilizes Google Services to protect users from phishing, malware, and other threats—it does so by checking the page you are visiting against a list of known malicious sites.
Vivaldi has an integrated ad blocker, which will block the vast majority of ads, so you most likely won’t feel the need to install an ad blocking extension. The browser has three levels of protection and can also block trackers as well as third-party cookies.
According to its privacy policy, Vivaldi does not collect users’ browsing data, but it does collect information about your device and location, apparently in order to “determine the total number of active users and their geographical distribution.”
Like most browsers nowadays, Vivaldi has a private window feature, in which the user can easily browse the web using DuckDuckGo or a similar privacy-oriented search engine.
The minute you launch Vivaldi, you realize it’s not your average browser. If you’ve been using Chrome or Firefox, it will definitely take some time to get used to Vivaldi.
Vivaldi vs. Brave: What to Keep in Mind
Both Brave and Vivaldi are good, safe browsers. Most people would probably feel more comfortable using Brave because it’s very intuitive and visually similar to Chrome. Vivaldi, on the other hand, can be customized to an incredible extent, which makes it a great option for power users.
On the security and privacy front, it’s hard to see Vivaldi beating Brave out of the box, but with some tweaks it can be a very powerful and secure browser, and offer a rather unique and personalized experience with its countless features and customization options.
With that said, if you don’t like either of these browsers but still want to ditch Chrome, there are always more options to consider.
