Brave VPN Review: Here’s What We Think of It

Brave Software is a company whose existence revolves around a popular web browser. You know which one we’re talking about – Brave. The company’s browser promises privacy and security compared to, let’s say, Chrome and Edge. But what about Brave VPN? Have you ever heard about it before reading this review?

Well, the company made some big improvements regarding its browser. This is now an AI-powered browser, with the addition of a seemingly excellent VPN. This should perfectly complement its goals. To allow Brave’s users to fully revel in online privacy and stay anonymous online.

Arguably, Brave VPN is a new product and it emerged out of the woodwork just recently. We have no doubt it’ll change over time, as Brave is known for frequent updates and improvements to its formulas. Still, it’s interesting to see if Brave VPN is any good and if it’s worth your money.

Unlike Opera VPN, which is completely free, this provider isn’t. This makes us have inherently higher expectations than usual. When you’re paying for the product, and the price isn’t the most affordable, it’s logical to request only the best – it rhymes even. Now, let’s see what’s Brave VPN like in this review.

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The 3 best alternatives to Brave VPN:

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Brave VPN User Experience & Device Support

The start of this Brave VPN review will have us talk about the user experience and device support. Let’s start with the latter. First, Brave VPN is part of the browser, which, by extension, means that it’ll work on every browser-supported platform. For those who didn’t know, Brave works on:

• Windows
• Linux
• macOS
• Android
• iOS

However, the VPN function is available on all platforms except for Linux. Also, the provider allows for up to 5 simultaneous connections, which isn’t such an impressive number, especially for the price. Just for comparison, ExpressVPN is much better, costs less, and offers 8 connections, so it’s 3 more.

Desktop and Mobile Apps

Nevertheless, in our Brave VPN tests and analysis, the provider showed decent ease of use. Alas, there are some discrepancies we’ll mention in a minute. As it’s an in-browser VPN, you’ll access it using the VPN icon in the upper-right portion of the screen – take a look below.

Once you click on it the provider’s interface will appear. It’s extremely simple because it only lets you choose the country and connect using the connection button. There’s a Cogwheel icon up top, you can contact support, manage your subscription, and read the “About” section. That’s all.

Are there any settings to tweak? Well, not exactly. However, to ensure this is the case, we visited Browser Settings and typed in “VPN” as the keyword. When we did that, we were “greeted” by only a few search results. For instance, you can select whether or not to show this button.

The only thing you can tweak is to use or not to use WireGuard, whose altering requires a browser restart. Interestingly, this isn’t a typical in-browser provider, as it also protects traffic outside of it. This can be seen when you open the taskbar menu on Windows and the app is active in the background.

If you click on it, you can immediately connect, manage your account again, remove the icon from the taskbar, and read the “About” section. Here’s the discrepancy we wanted to mention. Using Brave VPN from the taskbar lets you only connect to the server but NOT choose which one. Why?

We don’t have a freaking clue! You’ll have to choose the location from the browser and use the icon in the taskbar to connect. Quite peculiar. But we’re glad that this isn’t a browser-only service like Opera even though it’s basic as the lowest-spec Golf or Corolla.

TV Apps

The situation with TV apps and Brave is quite complex. While ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, and NordVPN work on Nvidia Shield TV, Smart TV, Fire TV Stick, and others, Brave still doesn’t. Logically, it supports Android and by extension, it should offer an app for at least Android TVs.

Well, it’s not the case. On its community forum, at least a dozen users complained about it. They can allegedly find Brave on Google Play but when installed, it won’t work. This means you can’t use the VPN either, as the browser doesn’t function.

It’s a shame because many of our writers enjoy this browser, and on their Android TVs, they’re forced to use Chrome. However, if you want a VPN provider for your TV, you can pretty much use ExpressVPN as the top choice or switch to CyberGhost with special streaming servers for unblocking content online.

Gaming Apps/Router Support

In this Brave VPN review for 2024, we should point out that the service has no gaming apps per se. However, given its support for the aforementioned platforms, you can still use it for gaming. Just not on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles.

This commodity is available with VPNs that support routers and as you can already guess, Brave isn’t one of them. It looks like it’s not so brave after all but we do hope that’ll change in the future. Until then, you’ll have to use one of the three aforementioned services, perhaps ExpressVPN.

This VPN supports plenty of routers and router firmware versions. As such, it lets you protect the entire household and wrap it in an impenetrable, VPN-secured network.

Is Brave VPN Safe & Secure? Security Features Examined

Brave users swear by this browser and frown upon those who use Chrome, a data-collection machine.

But what’s the VPN like in terms of security and privacy? Does it reinvent the wheel?

No, it doesn’t. In fact, it’s bare-bones, as you can see from the features listed below in our Brave VPN review.

AES-256-bit Encryption

First, Brave VPN uses AES-256 encryption. This is nothing new. We know hundreds of providers use it and it’s good because this is the highest level of encryption available. However, the provider doesn’t state it openly on the site, so we had to dig deeper to find that out.

Firewall

This service is called Brave Firewall + VPN, which means users also get a firewall. No – not the Great Firewall of China – far from it. The firewall in this app helps to protect you from malicious stuff like tracking, malware, and other privacy-endangering things.

Interestingly, the firewall also protects you against viruses, preventing them from entering your system. Albeit, in this Brave VPN review, we didn’t notice this effect, as we still managed to snatch one malware from the torrent file we downloaded.

The good thing is that the firewall works in conjunction with the VPN, so once you enable it, both features will spring into action. Of course, it’ll work on all systems, including Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. No Linux this time either.

WireGuard Protocol

As mentioned earlier in the Brave VPN review, the provider uses WireGuard to power your connection.

This is an extraordinary thing because we’re talking about the fastest protocol on the market. Not only that but WireGuard is incredibly secure and is used by many household names.

Surfshark, CyberGhost, PIA, Hide.me, and many others use it. Even NordVPN has its version of WireGuard called NordLynx. Read more about NordLynx here.

Shields

The final feature we want to discuss in this part of our Brave VPN review is called Shields. It’s not a VPN-related feature but we found it handy for day-to-day browsing. The feature is enabled automatically each time you open the browser and blocks ads, trackers, fingerprinting, scripts, and so on.

Even better, it works flawlessly and doesn’t interfere with the websites you’re visiting. We used Brave for streaming, online shopping, and even to access PayPal without a hitch. It’s worth noting that Shields, however, prevents our banking site from working properly.

We can’t log in properly, as we’re immediately returned to the home page of the site. Disabling Shields worked, so if you’re suffering the same problem, that’s what you can try. Nevertheless, Shields, the Firewall, and the VPN work more than well in conjunction.

It’s a shame that, in this Brave VPN test, we didn’t find the kill switch and split tunneling – two essential features of every premium service.

IP and DNS Leak Test: No IP/DNS Leaks Found

In spite of its severe lack of features, during our Brave VPN review, the provider performed relatively well. Again, it’s not a browser-only service, so it encrypts all traffic on your device. This will alter your IP address completely and give you a new online location across all apps.

To ensure everything is working well, we first connected to the US server in the application. From here, we checked for IP and DNS leaks on two websites. First, we used ipleak.net, which shows more than excellent results, as you can see below.

Brave VPN displays no IP/DNS leaks and instead of Eastern Europe, our IP address is in the United States. Next, we used browserleaks.com for the same test. By running an IP and DNS leak test simultaneously, we got these results:

Again, Brave VPN is impressive here and successfully manages to keep us anonymous online. Of course, it lacks a kill switch, so if things go south, you will be exposed to the prying eyes. This feature is available in ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, and NordVPN, so use one of them if that’s a big deal.

Does It Have a No-Logging Policy?

The most interesting part of this review of Brave VPN might be this one. Knowing this company for years now, as well as its privacy-focused business model, we expected that it would keep absolutely no logs. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, where is the company based?

In San Francisco, California. This already rings a few unpleasant bells. The US is a founding member of the 5 Eyes alliance. This alliance is known for excessive data collection, which is present in countries like Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and many European countries.

US VPN providers usually aren’t deemed the safest. However, exceptions like PIA VPN, IPVanish, and a few others are here. Brave VPN seems to be safe enough if we examine its VPN only. For example, the service is hosted by Guardian, yet another company that boasts about privacy.

We researched this company a bit but found nothing of concern. Just to be clear, we’re discussing the Guardian Firewall and not The Guardian (news outlet).

Which Information Is and Isn’t Stored?

Okay, so what about keeping logs? Well, its privacy policy regarding the Firewall + VPN is very brief. Brave VPN processes data like:

• Pseudonymous user ID
• Details of blocked trackers and triggered firewall rules
• IP addresses
• Email addresses

One glaring parameter is the IP address, which Brave VPN seems to store. But upon closer inspection, it says that the IP isn’t stored but just processed to create private connections and deliver the service. The company keeps logs of your email address for 12 months after closing a support ticket, though.

As for the first two things on the list, like your user ID and firewall-related stuff, it’s kept for 3 days. The reason for that is to send an alert to the user when the firewall is triggered. Other than that, Brave VPN seems to be clean, so far. There’s no mention of timestamps, connection data, and other tidbits.

We dislike its privacy-unfriendly jurisdiction, while its logging practices seem benign, at least for now. Still, we’d be careful because Brave VPN has no third-party audits, which proved to be very important nowadays. ExpressVPN and NordVPN have many of them, for example, making them more trustworthy.

Brave VPN for Streaming: Is It Any Good?

Bare-bones providers like this usually aren’t the happiest options for streaming. Besides, Brave VPN isn’t advertising itself to be great for Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, or any other streaming service. The function of this service is obviously privacy and security and it does that relatively well.

Still, in this Brave VPN review, we wanted to see just how well it’ll perform in this regard. Much to our expectation, it’s very bad. For instance, when talking about Netflix, we noticed that it couldn’t unblock a single library, including the US, Japanese, Canadian, Australian, and so on.

We either got an error message like the one below or simply couldn’t find the content we wanted:

Other streaming platforms fall into the same ballpark. This is especially true with BBC iPlayer, which we couldn’t unblock no matter what we tried during our review of Brave VPN. Using Brave Browser, Edge, Chrome, and Firefox yielded the same disappointing results.

Needless to say, all other popular platforms were inaccessible, despite our valiant efforts with this VPN.

For streaming, you’re better off with premium choices like ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, or NordVPN.

We noticed that these 3 work with pretty much any streaming service and are some of the best VPNs for Netflix.

Having used these services for 10+ years now, we can confirm they’ll wipe the floor with Brave VPN. Yet, as you’ll see later on in this Brave VPN review, they’ll also cost you way less!

Speed Tests: Here’s How Fast Brave VPN Is

Brave VPN isn’t a champ and excels at nothing in this review. Performance-wise, we already didn’t expect much because, on the site, it says that it has 500 Mbps servers. For comparison, free VPNs usually have 1 Gbps, while the 3 providers we mentioned offer 10 Gbps servers.

The difference is so large, it shouldn’t be discussed. If you’re expecting a serious performance from Brave, you’ll have to come to terms with the fact that you won’t get them. First, let us show you our native internet speeds.

At the time of writing this review of Brave VPN for 2024, we’re in Serbia – a country in Eastern Europe.

To test the service properly, we’ll adhere to the rules we have for every VPN. This means testing for 3 days in a row, 3 times a day, using 4 server locations; the UK, the US, Australia, and Japan.

In Settings, we also ensured Brave is using WireGuard to get the best speeds. With everything said, it’s time to check our speed test results and discuss them:

UK:

US:

Australia:

Japan:

When using the UK server, the speed reduction was already noticeable. We went from nearly 340 Mbps to around 240 Mbps in download speeds. Also, the upload speed was reduced by quite a lot, which didn’t promise much for further testing. Without a hint of surprise, Brave VPN showed worse results later.

The US, Australian, and Japanese servers all reduced our speeds while bumping up the latency. There’s no point in discussing our results too much because they’re underwhelming. For a much faster experience, we recommend using ExpressVPN.

For example, on the UK server, we achieved a speed of over 300 Mbps, which is around 30% faster. Rest assured, ExpressVPN will be even faster on long-distance servers, resulting in more reliable streaming, torrenting, and browsing.

Is Brave VPN Good for Gaming?

If you’re often enjoying gaming on Xbox or PlayStation consoles, you know how important fast connection speeds are. Granted, Brave VPN isn’t very fast, and using more distant servers will make the experience atrocious. But that’s exactly the point!

You want to use a server in Asia, for instance, to play with your friends or meet new ones across the globe. Well, in this Brave VPN review, our gaming wasn’t particularly enjoyable. We tested many games on our Windows PC and many of them performed poorly, including Warzone 2.

When using a server in Europe, the experience was a bit better but still laggy from time to time. Android and iOS gaming can be decent if you’re not playing fast-paced FPS games. However, if you’re often grinding gears in Apex Legends Mobile, forget about it – it’s nowhere near great.

One thing to note is that cloud gaming with Brave VPN can be a pain in the ass. Due to higher latency, as displayed above, you’ll notice dips in performance and big input lag. This can be remedied by disabling the VPN, in which case, you might be unable to play games due to geo-restrictions.

Again, try ExpressVPN if you’re willing to play games with a VPN and enjoy DDoS protection, anonymity, and unblocking capabilities.

Can I Use Brave VPN for P2P and Torrenting?

Are you frequenting websites like The Pirate Bay or 1337x? If so, protect your anonymity with a VPN.

Torrenting is dangerous and unsafe, both when discussing torrent sites and your ISP’s malicious intents. For this scenario, is Brave VPN viable and does it work properly?

Well, let the screenshot above tell you everything. Indeed, in this test of Brave VPN, we had zero issues with downloading torrents. As you can see, everything works smoothly, and through our torrent client, we swiftly downloaded Linux Mint. A copyright-free OS, by the way.

This time, we used a server in Germany, which was among the closest to us. The speed reduction is present but since Linux Mint isn’t taking much space, the entire OS was downloaded in 1-2 minutes. Our team tested all of its locations because there weren’t many, and all of them were P2P-friendly.

A faster P2P solution would be CyberGhost with optimized torrenting servers. However, Brave VPN will serve you well if you’re not frequently downloading large torrent files. In that case, going for CyberGhost or ExpressVPN is better to reduce download times.

Is It Working in China and Other Censored Countries?

On Brave’s website, we see no mention of obfuscation, Stealth VPN, NoBorders, or anything. Does this mean the VPN won’t work in China? Yes, it means exactly that. We saw the result from a mile away but still decided to give it a shot with our team members in China.

They reported no results – literally. Each connection attempt was “murdered” by the Great Firewall and Brave VPN couldn’t bypass it. One thing is not offering obfuscation but another is not offering OpenVPN TLS or TCP protocols. Brave VPN falls into both categories.

With WireGuard as the only option, getting over censorship of any kind will be impossible. While Brave VPN works in the UAE and Turkey, during VPN crackdowns, it works in no censored country. Those who live in them or often visit such countries can use obfuscated servers from NordVPN instead.

Brave VPN Servers and Server Locations

Do you know how many servers this provider has? We neither. During our Brave VPN review, we couldn’t find anything about its number of servers. The provider is so secretive and non-transparent that we find it difficult to extract any relevant information.

At least we know the number of countries it offers (14). Out of these 14 countries, only the US has 4 server locations, with all others having just 1. The server fleet is incredibly small and the server distribution doesn’t help either. Compare it to ExpressVPN with 105 countries – a gargantuan difference.

Actually, since the server network is so small, let’s list all the countries that Brave VPN offers.

• Australia
• Brazil
• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
• Mexico
• The Netherlands
• Singapore
• Spain
• Switzerland
• The US
• The UK

Asian countries like Japan and Singapore are here, along with South American regions like Brazil and… well, just Brazil. The provider uses 500 Mbps servers, as said, and most likely, they aren’t based on RAM. This doesn’t make it the safest VPN out there.

You’ll notice that there aren’t any African locations – not even South Africa and the UAE. That said, the provider will have to improve a lot if it wants to compete with the big boys. ExpressVPN has 3,000+, CyberGhost comes with 9,500+, and PIA grants you 30,000 servers to pick from.  Now, we’re talking!

Customer Support: How to Contact Brave VPN for Help?

Expecting 24/7 live chat support from a company like this sounds crazy. Would you believe us if we told you that it offers this feature? If you answered NO, you’re right.

Brave’s customer support is lackluster and mainly relies on the implementation of the Help Center and community forum.

The Help Center is riddled with guides and FAQs, so it’s great if you don’t want to get in touch. However, the best way to get help is through the aforementioned forum or Reddit, where Brave is moderately active. The provider is available on Twitter, YouTube, and Github as well.

But you won’t get much help from these profiles either. An interesting fact is that Brave doesn’t provide its email address for direct contact. Instead, you must get to it through the community forum. They will respond relatively quickly there, plus, you have other users and admins to help you out.

It’s a shame we don’t get full-fledged 24/7 live chat service like in ExpressVPN or CyberGhost. But hey, Brave’s budget probably flows to the other, more important improvements.

Brave VPN Pricing Review: Is It Affordable?

The Brave VPN review for 2024 won’t be complete without the price analysis. According to everything we said in this test, it’s hard to believe this is a paid VPN. But yes, we wouldn’t lie to you. It really is a premium service and an expensive one at that.

If you’re enticed with it for any reason and want to get it, these are your subscription plans. What? You don’t see any? Here it is – look up again – a single plan with a 7-day “free” trial. This trial is free but only if you provide your credit card information. Sure thing.

After that, Brave charges you a whopping $9.99 a month. Let that sink in. The VPN that can’t unblock Netflix, offers slow speeds and doesn’t include a kill switch costs this MUCH. ExpressVPN, a provider miles ahead of Brave VPN, costs $6.67 a month and you get 3 free months for the annual plan.

Even CyberGhost with nearly 10,000 servers and rock-solid security costs around $2 a month for the 2-year plan! Let’s not forget about NordVPN at nearly $3 a month, and this VPN destroys Brave in every sense. Do you think paying ten bucks for this one is worth it now? Do you?

Brave really went out of its way and gathered the courage to price its service inadequately. We want to congratulate the company for having the audacity to do this but also criticize them for over-valuing their work. Chill, Brave. You’re a long way from a hefty price tag quality-wise.

Available Payment Methods

The payment methods that the service offers aren’t numerous. Credit cards and Stripe are the only methods you’ll be able to use. At least in our country, we couldn’t find PayPal and crypto options.

How to Get a Refund from Brave VPN

There’s no clear refund policy on this provider’s site. However, after analyzing its terms of use, we concluded that you can indeed get a refund. In that case, you must provide a valid enough reason in the form of a technical problem or unsolvable issue that would make the refund possible.

Being simply dissatisfied with the VPN won’t get you anywhere. Also, we don’t know when you should request a refund. Is it in the first 3 or 30 days? Again, we’re out of clues. But we can advise you to do it ASAP if you think you won’t like the experience you’re in for.

What We Don’t Like About Brave VPN?

Brave VPN does very few things right and many of them wrong. While we like its simplicity and the inclusion of WireGuard, we can say we dislike pretty much everything else. First, the provider is limited to only 5 connections, which, for the price, could be increased to 10 or more.

Second, the service lacks a kill switch, which is a big deal and could result in more than a few IP/DNS leaks. Next, Brave is a US-based company, that brings with it privacy issues due to the country’s involvement in the 5 Eyes.

Streaming with Brave VPN will be atrociously bad, while the performance you’ll get is subpar. While torrenting is allowed, keep in mind that it won’t work in China, so censorship will still haunt you in this and other similar countries.

Perhaps the biggest disgrace is its price, which is ridiculously high and makes the VPN not worth it. Factor in an unclear refund policy and you can get charged if you forget to cancel it in the first 7 days of the trial, without the option to get your money back.

How Do Other People Rate Brave VPN?

If you don’t trust our Brave VPN review, let’s go through some of the reviews from other people online.

Keep in mind that most of them are related to the browser, with very few mentioning the VPN. On Trustpilot, we found two of them.

The first user praises the browser but he/she still cancelled the subscription and got a refund. Obviously, the user was dissatisfied. The second user was disappointed with Brave VPN and customer support, stating that he/she would go back to Firefox.

iOS users gave Brave 4.8 out of 5 stars but most reviews are about the browser. Its VPN isn’t mentioned even in the newest reviews, so we’re not sure how satisfied these users are.

Finally, Google Play users gave it 4.7 stars out of 1.54M reviews. They’re mostly satisfied with the browser, with very few mentions of the VPN. These mentions aren’t very positive, as they criticize its lack of features and poor performance.

Even Reddit discussions aren’t mentioning Brave VPN too much. But again, when there’s mention of it, people usually recommend premium providers like ExpressVPN and NordVPN instead. Sometimes, even Mullvad VPN comes into play as the preferred choice.

Conclusion: Still Undercooked

To end this Brave VPN review, we need to digress on the things we said. The takeaway is that this is still an undercooked product with lots of features missing. We’re not sure if the company will develop it into a more serious provider if it’ll remain on this level, which is very low, by the way.

Even if you’re a non-demanding user, Brave VPN most likely won’t satisfy your needs. If it was a free VPN, we would be milder and not criticize it that much. But at $10 or so a month, we expect a LOT more, starting with better security, faster speeds, and somewhat respectable streaming capabilities.

But no. In this Brave VPN review for 2024, all we got was a bitter taste in our mouths. A limited, barely functional VPN with no protocol selection or even a kill switch. Really, Brave? In that case, it’s easy to recommend other options, which we already did.

The best alternative to Brave VPN is ExpressVPN, a provider still cheaper but much better in every way. And if you’d love to save even more cash, consider CyberGhost and NordVPN. At under $3 a month, both of these are exceptional and are at least 3 octaves above Brave.

So, would you rather overpay and be disappointed or underpay the VPN and end up extremely satisfied? We think the answer is obvious.