Brave Benchmarks Claim Faster Loads and Lower Resource Use Than Chrome, Firefox, Edge
Brave's latest desktop browser benchmarks claim it beats Chrome, Edge, and Firefox with less CPU, memory, and energy use, plus faster page loads.
In Brave's testing, the browser used 44% less CPU, 28% less memory, and 10% less energy on average compared with the three competing browsers. It also completed page loads 20% faster while transferring 26% less inbound data and 39% less outbound data, the report said.
The benchmarks showed Brave averaged about 33% CPU usage, while Chrome used 47%, Edge 53%, and Firefox 78%. For memory, Brave used about 1.2 GB, compared to 1.75 GB for Chrome, 1.62 GB for Edge, and 1.65 GB for Firefox.
Brave attributed the differences to its built-in blocking of ads, analytics scripts, tracking pixels, and other third-party requests, which reduces network traffic and the browser's workload. In page-loading tests, Brave took about 4.4 seconds to fully load a page, while Chrome took 5.1 seconds, Firefox 5.3 seconds, and Edge 6 seconds.
When measuring Largest Contentful Paint, which indicates when the main content appears, Brave and Chrome both averaged about 2.4 seconds, with Edge and Firefox just behind at 2.5 seconds. This suggests Brave's main advantage comes after the main content is visible, since there are fewer background ads, trackers, analytics requests, and delayed scripts to process.