Brave Search icon
Brave Search icon

Brave Search

 105 likes

Brave Search is built on top of a completely independent index, and doesn’t track users, their searches, or their clicks.

Brave Search screenshot 1

License model

  • FreemiumProprietary

Platforms

  • Online
  • Tor  [https://search.brave4u7jddbv7cyviptqjc7jusxh72uik7zt6adtckl5f4nwy2v72qd.onion/](https://search.brave4u7jddbv7cyviptqjc7jusxh72uik7zt6adtckl5f4nwy2v72qd.onion/)
  • Brave
4 / 5 Avg rating (32)
105 likes
21comments

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Properties

  1.  Privacy focused
  2.  Lightweight

Features

  1.  Instant Answers
  2.  Independent Searching
  3.  No Tracking
  4.  Dark Mode
  5.  Bangs
  6.  Independent search index
  7.  Ad-free
  8.  No registration required
  9.  AI-Powered
  10.  No Logs
  11.  Search by country and distance
  12.  Bypass Censorship
  13.  Full-Text Search
  14.  Block Trackers

Brave Search News & Activities

Highlights All activities

Recent News

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Recent activities

  • FedePrescia, ekroberts73 and Myrano liked Brave Search
    21 days ago
  • App icon
    refoorest added Brave Search as alternative to refoorest
    28 days ago
  • T0mmaso, VyomStark and ytg liked Brave Search
    28 days ago
  • Asumeh reviewed Brave Search  
    2 months ago

    Amazing privacy-focused search engine as it has an independent search index, !bangs, Discussions, and Answer with AI and chat mode (both with equally heavy emphasis on privacy).

    Just a few minor gripes:

    • Not open-source
    • Occasionally one non-intrusive ad for some search queries (hence why it has a Premium subscription available)
    • Anonymous usage metrics is enabled by default
  • iSky7113 rated Brave Search  
    2 months ago
  • iSky7113 liked Brave Search
    2 months ago
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Comments and Reviews

   
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Comment summary: Brave Search is praised for privacy features and independence, though its non-open-source status raises concerns. Some users appreciate the unique features like Goggles and AI integration despite occasional accuracy issues. However, criticisms include reliance on Bing for results, resemblance to DuckDuckGo, slower performance, and usability issues like unreadable fonts. Despite promising features, skepticism remains about data independence and accuracy, with hopes for improvement.
BubbleTea
  
Top positive commentMay 20, 2022

Great private search. It finds what I need most of the time and doesn't censor my results.

It's a bit slower than DuckDuckGo and sometimes I'd have to fall back on Startpage Search If I really can't find something but overall, it's decent.

1 reply
Sam Lander

How do you know it is privacy-focused or doesn't censor or downrank results if it is not open-source?

Reply written Aug 24, 2023

If this reply contains spam or other abuse, notify admins about it.
3
DaRootBeer1231
  
Top negative commentFeb 2, 2024

I really do appriciate Brave trying to break into this sphere, as having Google and Bing being the only major players with an actual full search index sucks. With that said, holy crap Brave Search isn't good. It just never has anything useful, and it feels like rather than making sure that the search results are good, they're instead focusing on random one-off ideas like Goggles or whatever. I want to see them do well but after three times of trying to switch over to it and it not going well, I just have to give up.

4
Asumeh
  
Positive commentDec 3, 2024

Amazing privacy-focused search engine as it has an independent search index, !bangs, Discussions, and Answer with AI and chat mode (both with equally heavy emphasis on privacy).

Just a few minor gripes:

  • Not open-source
  • Occasionally one non-intrusive ad for some search queries (hence why it has a Premium subscription available)
  • Anonymous usage metrics is enabled by default
0
panoptes
  
Negative commentDec 3, 2024

the AI assistant they have is very biased just like Goolge, I would not recommend it

-2
Donald Privacy
  
Negative commentNov 26, 2024

am i missing something? it's just google's results but you can't go past page 7, poor

0
GruvPuddles
  
Positive commentNov 25, 2024

I don't even use the Brave browser, (I use firefox-forks for the most part) but changing my defaults Brave Search is usually the first thing I do when I'm setting up a new browser. It's - by far - the most accurate in terms of relevence, their little AI summaries are (9 times out of 10) genuinely helpful, and the fact it's totally independent is refreshing. Most 'privacy-respecting' search engines callback to Google, Bing, or another major company for search results. As far as I can tell, brave search is one of the few that doesn't.

The only things I miss from a service such as Google, is the shopping tab. In saying that, I can understand why this is tricky to do under braves circumstance, as they don't have nearly as much data on user-location or shopping/general web habits as Google.

Other than shopping, the only other thing Brave is lacking on is their Image-search. It doesn't seem nearly as accurate or relevent-to-searchterm as their general browser. The upside to this, is it's rather easy to find a userscript to inject either DuckDuckGo's or Google's image base, which fixes this problem entirely.

I rarely reccommend anything so highly - but genuinely - if you're looking for an alternative search engine (or just trying to de-google) Brave Search is an EXCELLENT start.

1
Minnie Chang
  
Negative commentOct 3, 2024

As the CEO himself said on Twitter / X the independence of this is questionable. Their index was bought from a company which built it through surveillance in Firefox browser and their way of crawling the internet would seem to be grabbing results from other search engines. As such it contains a lot of very GOOGLE like results and MSM. Their AI also has a lot of bias. Check their own online community to see the problems with Brave Search I hope to see it improve.

2
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7 of 21 comments

What is Brave Search?

Brave Search is built on top of a completely independent index, and doesn’t track users, their searches, or their clicks.

Brave Search is available in beta release globally on all Brave browsers (desktop, Android, and iOS) as one of the search options alongside other search engines, and will become the default search in the Brave browser later. It is also available from any other browser.

Brave Search is different from other search engines because it uses its own index and follows different principles:

  1. Privacy: no tracking or profiling of users.
  2. User-first: the user comes first, not the advertising and data industries.
  3. Independence: Brave has its own search index for answering common queries privately without reliance on other providers.
  4. Choice: soon, options for ad-free paid search and ad-supported search. (Sometime in early 2022, Brave Search results will include paid ads (delivered, of course, in a way that protects privacy). Users with a Brave Search Premium subscription will see ad-free search results)
  5. Transparency: no secret methods or algorithms to bias results, and soon, community-curated open ranking models to ensure diversity and prevent algorithmic biases and outright censorship.
  6. Seamlessness: best-in-class integration between the browser and search without compromising privacy, from personalization to instant results as the user types.
  7. Openness: Brave Search will soon be available to power other search engines.

Brave Search uses its own index, but also ensures fully anonymous search, is transparent in how search results are ranked, and integrates with a privacy-preserving browser on desktop and mobile – an across-the-board combination of independence and privacy which no other provider offers.

Brave Search is also introducing the industry’s first search independence metric, displaying the ratio of results coming exclusively from Brave’s index. It is derived privately using the user’s browser as we do not build user profiles. Users can check this aggregate metric to verify the independence of their results and see how results are powered by our own index, or if third-parties are being used.

Brave Search Videos

Official Links

Brave Search information

  • Developed by

    Brave Software
  • Licensing

    Proprietary and Freemium product.
  • Pricing

    Subscription that costs up to $2 per month + free version with limited functionality.
  • Rating

    Average rating of 4 (32 ratings)
  • Alternatives

    102 alternatives listed
  • News

    10 news article related to Brave Search
  • Supported Languages

    • English
    • French
    • German
    • Japanese

AlternativeTo Categories

Online ServicesSecurity & Privacy

Our users have written 21 comments and reviews about Brave Search, and it has gotten 105 likes

Brave Search was added to AlternativeTo by architsastam on Jun 1, 2021 and this page was last updated Sep 6, 2024.