Out of all the privacy browsers, Brave and DuckDuckGo seem to be two great options for mobile devices. Brave has been around as a web browser, but DuckDuckGo has gone from being a privacy search engine to a standalone browser on Android and iOS. Discover our comparison between Brave and DuckDuckGo: Which is the best mobile browser?
They both have great technology behind them that offer good user security, and it can seem difficult to choose between them. We’re here to help you make one as we proceed with the mobile comparison between Brave and DuckDuckGo.
Brave vs. DuckDuckGo Comparison: Which is the Best Mobile Browser?
Comparison between Brave and DuckDuckGo : User interface, performance and stability
In this section, we will briefly understand how these browsers behave in terms of aesthetics and how they both provide a basic web browsing experience.
The Brave browser has a more visually detailed home page. It has a wallpaper with all your favorite websites in a translucent box. Interestingly, it also has a small window where you can see the work Brave Shields has done: the number of trackers and ads blocked so far.
If you didn’t know, Brave is built on top of the Chromium engine. So if you were wondering how most elements and options look like in Chrome – you already have an answer. Especially the tab management is the same as in Chrome.
get a grid view by default; Regrettably , the stack view has been disabled. But you also have the option to long press on a tab and then group it accordingly. This is useful if you are looking for a more organized web browsing experience.
Brave also appears to be quite optimized. Being long-term users, we can guarantee good performance and stability, as long as your device hardware is decent enough. We do not recall facing any issue like app crash during our usage time.
Brave gets a big round of applause from us for delivering a good user experience. But, read the statement again: we mentioned “our” side. As people who cover tech, we are enthusiasts and go crazy over a feature-packed product. And we say that because, for a normal user, the interface of Brave Browser will feel a bit overwhelming.
There are buttons and icons everywhere and so many options in settings that most basic users probably won’t bother to use. And why would a normal user bother with encryption features anyway? Well, you can opt for some reconfigurations to .
Or maybe, there could be a better option that focuses on providing a minimal web browsing experience and great privacy features.
DuckDuckGo: simple but functional
DuckDuckGo has always expressed his opinion about all the charlatans ( game of words ) that Google is safe, as both fans and the company claim. They have always expressed concern about the lack of privacy on the major search engines and now they have a web browser that goes hand in hand with what they stand for.
It starts with a plain and boring home screen with a big logo in the background. It has nothing but a search bar, an attractive “fire” icon, a tab count, and the menu icon. But who said boring was bad? DuckDuckGo is far from being a bad browser, as it offers a smooth and functional user experience
We may not have used it as long as we used Brave, but we didn’t face any performance-related issues. It felt lighter than Brave . Navigating the browser was a pretty snappy experience. However, website upload and download speeds were slightly slower than Brave’s.
However, one disadvantage is that lacks the group tabs feature. And the tab switching is similar to Brave as the tabs are displayed in grid mode.
The best feature of the home screen must be the one click button to clear all tabs and browsing data . This requires four to five steps in Chrome. The ‘fire’ icon we talked about helps you do that. The option to change the color of the app icon is also a nice touch.
Overall, DuckDuckGo also offers a good user experience. Does the basics ok And we can’t complain. But we would probably like to have some widgets on the home page, that at least show the amount of data saved by blocking ads and trackers. At least this would be a stat that a normal user would care about if it weren’t for the number of trackers being blocked.
The bottom line is that both browsers are here to give you one thing: privacy features. You’ve heard enough from us, so we might as well move on to the next section of the article.
Brave vs DuckDuckGo: Privacy Features
Brave offers Shields to protect you against browser fingerprinting and trackers. On the other hand, DuckDuckGo makes up for it by using GPS and App Tracking Protection, which is a unique addition to the world of Android browsers.
Brave Shields help prevent ads and trackers to improve your browsing experience while adding an extra degree of security. Quite a brave move indeed, for ruthlessly block all ads and “other creepy stuff,” as they call it.
Brave Shield protects the user through the following means:
- It blocks most of the ads and trackers that come with various websites.
- Discard cookies from most websites.
- It makes your browser more difficult to recognize and track without cookies.
- Upgrades you to secure connections when websites support them.
- Blocks malicious code and malicious sites.
Oh, and you also have the option to disable the much discussed and hated AMP website technology. You can read our detailed guide on since we have complete coverage.
DuckDuckGo: GPC and App Tracking Protection
DuckDuckGo disables all third party trackers and even displays statistics. It also has a one-click privacy switch called Global Privacy Control (GPC) which protects you from cookies and trackers while upgrading sites to HTTPS.
It is also testing two new features in beta: Protection of email Y Application Tracking Protection . Trackers in apps are a huge barrier to keeping your phone private as they collect data about your app activity, which may contain your personal information. DuckDuckGo helps keep these trackers out of your apps.
As of now, we were able to test app tracking prevention that prevents large corporations from snooping on your data while you use apps. On Android, DuckDuckGo uses the VPN to filter network traffic tracking requests coming from apps.
You will be surprised to know how cunningly apps leak your data to big corporations. So the next time you see an ad about something you just searched for or something that seems specific to you, you can spread the blame among all the apps you once thought were innocent.
Brave or DuckDuckGo: search engine
Brave Search is a own search engine . It’s similar to Google and Bing, but it doesn’t track your searches or preferences. Also, except for the pictures , does not rely on the aforementioned search engines or algorithms for its results. Is available in .
As for the mobile version settings, you get the minimal options to open the link in a new tab or change the theme. Brave has just started their journey in developing a search engine, and we can’t wait to see how they stack up against the big names in the future.
If you thought DuckDuckGo was a completely independent search engine, we hate to tell you that it has associated with bing to provide search results. But, don’t get us wrong, this does not compromise the privacy and title claim of a ‘private search engine’.
Your searches on DuckDuckGo are still protected and private.
Additional Features: Brave has crypto!
Users who watch ads are uniquely rewarded by Brave. Instead of blindly inserting ads and ‘productizing’ the user, it gives them the option to activate optional ads that pay them in BAT tokens for their ‘attention’.
The Basic Attention Token (BAT) is an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency token, which forms the fundamentals of the Brave Browser business model. It is a cryptocurrency token based on the ERC-20 standard. You can earn BAT mainly in two ways:
- Earn BAT using Brave Ads – As a Brave user, you can activate Brave Ads to earn free BAT for ad notifications and web surfing.
- Get free grants from BAT tokens: You can get BAT tokens just for installing and using Brave Browser.
- Earn with the Brave Creators program : Brave allows users to tip BAT tokens to their favorite creators directly.
We have covered more about Brave Crypto features in our detailed FAQ.
Brave vs DuckDuckGo: pros and cons
We’ve seen all the highlights of what these browsers can do, especially on the privacy front. But like we said, we’re here to help you make a decision.
Well obviously there is no single option, we will give you compelling reasons to install one of the two when you finish reading our article reading the pros and cons. And we will also give you our selection.
Pros and Cons of Brave Browser
Advantage:
- Loaded with features: highly attractive and detailed interface.
- Brave Shields does a brilliant job of blocking ads and trackers while giving you a good amount of control.
- The crypto features are a great add-on and incentive to use Brave.
- It is similar to Chrome in terms of settings and user interface.
- Refined user interface elements make it a joy to use and navigate.
Cons:
- Similar to Chrome is also a disadvantage. Features removed by Chrome seem to be removed quickly in Brave as well.
- It may seem cluttered for users who don’t care about fancy features.
- The VPN is a paid add-on.
- Excessive privacy settings can harm websites.
- There have been concerns about Brave running in the background.
- In our experience, some websites, eg. Reddit refuses to upload some…
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