Brave browser reached 101 million monthly active users and 42 million daily active users this September, marking a new record in the project’s history.
At the same time, Brave Search, the project’s privacy-focused search engine that launched in 2021 and relies on its own web index, has grown to 1.6 billion monthly search queries and 20 billion per year.
The announcement notes that not all queries came from Brave Browser, where it is the default search engine, roughly 8% coming from Chrome users.
Brave is a privacy-focused web browser created by Brendan Eich, first released in 2016. It blocks ads and trackers by default, which increases performance, and integrates crypto features.
In 2021, the project announced that it reached the 50 million active users milestone, a significant growth from 24 million in 2020.
In recent years, Brave has experienced a meteoric rise in adoption, partly because of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), an EU regulation that took effect in 2023, which requires “gatekeeper” tech companies to offer users a choice.
DMA forced Apple, starting with iOS 17.4 released in March 2024, to introduce alternatives to Safari browser. This reportedly boosted Brave installs on iOS by 50% in Europe.
Over the past two years, Brave has been growing consistently by approximately 2.5 million new users per month, a rate that surpasses the adoption rate of other browsers.
Brave browser monthly users over time
Source: Brave
"100 million users represent more than a growth milestone—they constitute a movement for a better Web that puts users first," said Brendan Eich, Brave CEO.
"Across the globe, users are choosing privacy and control over their online experience, instead of Big Tech’s tracking and abuse," the CEO added.
Apart from the browser itself and the search engine, Brave also launched privacy-conscious AI tools that recorded a significant adoption rate.
According to Brave, its AI summarizer, now called "AI Answers," generates 15 million answers every day. The recent launch of Ask Brave, a system that consolidates traditional search with LLM chat, is expected to take this number even higher.