Brave VPN Review – In-Depth Breakdown (2026 Edition)

Some people claim that if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t mind invasions of privacy. Our response to that is to quote the wily Cardinal Richelieu: “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

The fact is that even innocent, innocuous bits of information can be used for nefarious purposes. That’s especially true in the age of the internet, where your browsing history and personal data can, at best, be used to sell you stuff, while at worst it can be used in cybercrimes.

In partnership with DNworld

VPNs help reduce your risk, protecting your personal info and diminishing the ability of others to track your activity.

Brave is primarily a FOSS (free and open-source software) browser, but the developers have steadily added premium tools to enhance their product. The most popular of these enhancements is the firewall and VPN, which hides your internet traffic, blocks potential threats and masks your IP address location.

In this review, we’re going to look at Brave’s speed and security features, as well as how these attributes compare to other VPNs on the market.

Brave VPN Company Background

American born and bred, Brave was founded in San Francisco in 2015, unveiling its first browser in 2016. Operating as a private, independent company, it’s run by a pair of computer programmers who started their business to combat the overbearing influence of Big Tech.

Since its initial release, Brave has added an AI assistant, a search engine, a video conferencing tool, a news feed, a crypto wallet, a playlist creator, a rewards program and, of course, a VPN. All these features have been built directly into the browser.

While most of Brave’s software is run in house, the VPN aspect is powered by Guardian, a fellow San Francisco company with a similar privacy-minded philosophy that has been selling firewall software since 2012.

In general, people tend to have privacy concerns about VPN services based out of the US – quite understandably in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations. Brave has attempted to combat that with a robust no-logs policy, which means they do not record and store information on your browsing habits.

Core Features

Brave VPN is a virtual private network built into the Brave browser that protects internet traffic across the entire device. Once you turn it on, it will encrypt data coming from all your browsers and apps.

One Brave VPN subscription currently covers up to 10 devices, including mobile devices that run on either Android, iOS, macOS or Windows systems. Linux is in the works but is not currently available.

As we’ve already mentioned, Brave VPN is essentially run by Guardian, which deals with hosting the VPN servers and ensuring the functionality of the software, though you need the Brave browser installed on each supported device to activate it, and Brave offers access inside the browser rather than through a separate app. That means that it’s mostly Guardian’s policies that determine things like encryption, logging and speed.

Security & Privacy

Brave VPN has two types of protocols: WireGuard, which uses ChaCha20 encryption, and IKEv2, which uses AES-256 encryption. In both cases, the service creates an encrypted tunnel, with the VPN tunnel routing your traffic securely. Both encryptions are considered top of the line – you’ll find the same ciphers on almost all the best VPNs.

Also like all the best VPNs, there is a no-logs policy. This means the company doesn’t store your browsing activity or other personal info tied to your connection, including connection information like your IP address and time stamps.

Brave identifies initial software and infrastructure security audits in 2024 and links the reports publicly. An audit is evidence about a defined system at a particular time, not a guarantee that every future configuration or use case is risk-free, and Brave’s no-logs claims are not fully independently verified on an ongoing basis beyond the published audit scope. Review the scope and date of the available reports before drawing conclusions.

As for security tools, Brave has a fairly pared-down offering, at least compared to other VPN products, though the firewall component adds built in firewall protection at the network level. Its features include:

• Kill switch. The software automatically blocks your connection if the VPN temporarily drops, ensuring that none of your data is transmitted through an unsecured tunnel.
• DNS leak protection. Internet service providers (ISPs) and/or hackers can monitor your browsing habits using DNS data, but leak protection stops this information from being sent.
• Tracker blocker. This stops all kinds of trackers embedded in websites, emails and the like from monitoring your location and online behavior, and it can also block ads for added firewall protection.

Performance & Server Network

Brave advertises 300+ 10 Gbps servers across 40+ regions. Check the current location list for the places where you plan to work; region counts and country counts are not interchangeable.

Their servers are in about 40 regions, including Australia, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, the USA and several European nations.

That might sound impressive on the surface, but it’s significantly fewer countries than big VPN providers like Proton and Surfshark, which boast coverage in more than 100. Depending on where you are living as a nomad, this could have a big effect on the speed of your internet connection.

All VPNs slow down browsing because the data you send out and receive is passing through additional encryption processes. This can get even more sluggish if you are further away from a server, because this increases the latency, aka ping, aka the time it takes for data packets to travel to the destination of the server and back to your device, and both download and upload speeds can drop.

Before buying, check which server locations are available near your destination. Distance, network routing and congestion can affect latency, so a server list alone cannot predict your connection speed.

Test the available nearby locations on your own connection during the trial. Indoor Wi-Fi quality and your internet provider can matter as much as the selected VPN region.

Special Features

Brave Shields and Brave Firewall + VPN are different features, and Brave Firewall + VPN combines both a vpn and firewall features for device-wide protection. Shields provides browser-level ad and tracker blocking without a VPN subscription, while the firewall forms an extra barrier against trackers beyond browser-only protections. The paid VPN adds an encrypted connection for the device, so it is not just a built in vpn in the browser because the connection extends beyond browser tabs. Do not buy the VPN solely to obtain the free browser’s ad blocker.

The original review praised Brave’s ad blocking. That observation should not be interpreted as a new comparative test of paid VPNs: the browser’s Shields feature is available separately. For a purchase decision, focus on the VPN’s connection, supported devices and price.

For Android users, it is also possible to engage in split tunneling through the Brave app. This allows you to choose for some apps to connect normally, rather than via the VPN, which can be useful if you’re having trouble with speeds.

Speed, Streaming & Torrenting Performance

The following speed and streaming observations come from the original review. They have not been independently rerun for this September 2026 update. Results depend on connection, server, device, time of day and application; they are historical observations, not a current performance promise.

Original Speed Test Results – Retested in September 2026

Brave claim they can get up to 500 Mbps in the best of all possible worlds, which isn’t as fast as providers like Proton and Surfshark, which can get up 950+ Mbps.

However, we’re more interested in how much the VPN slows down our connection than we are in ultimate speeds, since most nomads aren’t necessarily going to have access to killer internet abroad.

Connecting to a European server from Europe, we noticed very minimal decreases in speed and very reasonable latency compared to our normal connection without a VPN.

Downloading: 3.65%

Uploading: 4.55%

Latency: 184.62%

When we connected to the fastest available servers in the US and Singapore, the speeds (unsurprisingly) were a little down, but still very manageable. The latency went up enormously (again, unsurprisingly), which did slow down the browsing but not unbearably so.

We should add that Europe is the best place possible (aside from North America) for Brave VPN to work. Given the lack of servers in Asia and Africa, we’d expect there to be slower speeds and more lag connecting from those regions.

Streaming & P2P Support

If you read reviews of Brave VPN from a couple of years ago, a lot of them talk about how bad the service is for streaming, but we didn’t have any problems at all. Those observations relate to the version available when the original tests were performed. In our tests, it worked well, but streaming services can change how they detect VPN traffic over time.

We found it was easy to connect to the Netflix libraries in both the US and Singapore, as well as other countries in Europe. We didn’t have any issues with buffering – everything played normally and without any apparent resolution issues.

We also tested Amazon Prime across different locations, as well as connecting to BBC iPlayer in the UK.

Torrenting also worked fine, although it isn’t officially supported by Brave VPN and there aren’t P2P-optimized servers that you can choose in the app, though the firewall can help reduce tracking during P2P use. In other words, it’s not the best option for torrenting, but you could do worse! Brave does not advertise server obfuscation for bypassing tougher VPN blocks.

Security and Data Protection

We’ve already talked a little bit about the security features of Brave VPN, but for people who want a bit more detail, we’ll deep dive into what’s on offer.

Encryption & VPN Protocols

Brave mainly uses WireGuard to create the encrypted tunnel that enables data to move securely over the internet, and it is a modern, lightweight tunneling protocol. The only thing we’ve seen that is (arguably) better are some of the custom protocols developed by companies like NordVPN – and these are built atop WireGuard.

Brave also supports IKEv2 in relevant configurations. Neither protocol should be labelled categorically secure or insecure without considering its implementation and settings. Check the protocol and available controls on your operating system rather than assuming every platform has the same options.

No-Logs Policy & Audit History

Brave has a no logs privacy policy, which means they don’t store data about your browsing activity or connection logs.

Guardian’s published audit information should be read with its actual dates and scope. The original review referred to the first audit as “last year”; that relative date is no longer a reliable description. Review the linked policy and reports for the most recent material.

The results of their findings are openly published on Guardian’s website, but check the published reports and third party audits for scope because they do not automatically confirm how any persistent data is handled.

Jurisdiction & Privacy Implications

There’s no beating around the bush with this one: Brave Software is a US company, and the US is not a privacy-friendly jurisdiction. It’s been well documented that their intelligence services can and will request user data.

In the past, they have even forced companies with active no-logs policies to log user data, while preventing them from revealing this using a court-mandated gag order.

As if this wasn’t worrying enough, the US is also part of multiple intelligence-sharing organizations around the world, which means any data they gather from, for example, Brave can be shared with other governments around the world.

All this isn’t to say that getting Brave VPN is pointless, since you can still clearly use it to mask your public IP address and reduce some network-level tracking, helping with online privacy and shielding your browsing history from local networks and other third parties while streaming across borders. It just means that you should be aware that Brave VPN isn’t the best choice if you’re worried about the US government snooping on the downlow, even if that added protection is still useful.

Pricing and Subscription Plans

Brave’s browser is available for free, but the firewall and VPN are paid add-ons that can be purchased through a monthly or annual subscription.

Plan Breakdown

The VPN subscription offers protection on up to 10 devices across Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It automatically comes with a 7-day free trial for new users, before you are fully subscribed to the service.

Single-month subscription: $9.99.

12-month subscription: $99.99 (approximately $8.33 per month).

Payment Options & Refunds

Check the payment methods offered at checkout. Direct subscriptions and subscriptions through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store may have different billing and cancellation routes.

Of course, if you purchase through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, you can pay using their accepted methods.

There is NO 30-day money-back guarantee, as there is with VPN specialists like Surfshark, ExpressVPN and NordVPN. Although Brave will offer a refund in some circumstances – like if you accidentally overran the trial period and forgot to cancel or if your annual subscription auto-renewed – it’s purely at its discretion.

If you do want to stop your subscription, all you have to do is log in to your account on Brave and cancel the plan. If you purchased through the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store, you just do the normal thing of navigating to your subscriptions and canceling there. It’s all very (dare we say it) idiot proof.

Customer Support Experience

Support is available through Brave’s help resources and a support request route linked from its VPN page. For connection problems, include your operating system, browser version and a description of the error. The original review’s criticism of discoverability remains an experience report, not proof that support channels are absent today.

The first port of call is its help center, which has a very limited range of posts on how to activate and use the VPN. Partly, that’s down to Brave VPN’s narrow range of features.

If your question isn’t resolved by the help center posts, you can also post on the community forum, which is monitored by a mix of admins and volunteers. We found this quite useful for some of our questions, but it did take quite a bit of effort to unearth what we were looking for – and often the posts shown were out of date.

The best thing to do for more complex problems is to contact the technical support team through the Brave VPN settings. This raises a service ticket with Guardian.

What we find most annoying about all this is that Brave’s website doesn’t clearly signpost any of these three options. Both the help center and the community forum are buried in a messy footer, while we had to root around for quite a while to find out how to contact the VPN-specific technical support.

Brave’s current VPN page explicitly links to support. Use that current route instead of relying on the original article’s navigation description, which may refer to an older page design.

Granted, Brave is a free browser, so they probably don’t want to dedicate a lot of resources to customer support. BUT if we’re paying what is one of the most expensive VPN subscription prices on the market, we do kind of expect a little more service!

Pros and Cons

Pros:

✅ Easy to use

✅ Free browser includes ad blocking separately from the paid VPN

✅ No-logs policy

Cons:

❌ Limited extra features

❌ Basic customer service

Comparison With Other VPNs

Historical comparison: The figures below are retained from the original review, refreshed September 2026 measurements or live competitor prices. Compare current renewal terms directly before buying.

*We’ve selected the midrange option for each service listed above, rather than the basic or premium plan. Speeds and prices will vary according to geography.

As a VPN provider, Brave posted historically strong speed results in our tests, though most VPNs offer more features for less money. It has a lower download speed loss than almost any other VPN we tested, while the upload speed loss was also impressively minimal.

The price, however, is a bit insane. It’s way more than every other VPN mainstay on the market, despite offering fewer features. That said, perhaps it’s worth it for people who like the company, its privacy-centered ethos and its suite of features that are built into a FOSS browser.

User Reviews and Ratings

Brave’s ratings on sites like Trustpilot and the Google Play Store, which can matter to Brave users trying to judge the VPN separately from the browser experience, are based on feedback about its browser’s overall performance. That means that it’s impossible to assess how positively people view its VPN as its own service.

The original article quoted ratings from review platforms, but those figures are not current measurements. Read recent reviews yourself, filter for VPN-specific experiences and check the platform and date. Browser reviews, company complaints and VPN reliability reports are not interchangeable evidence.

App-store ratings change and may combine feedback about the whole browser. Rather than treating a historical star score as a VPN rating, look for recurring reports about the particular device and feature you plan to use.

What people like:

The ad blocking. Many users are pleased with the ability to filter out most ads and pop-ups.

The commitment to privacy. There’s a lot of positive feedback about the company’s ethos.

It’s easy to use. Getting the VPN set up is as easy as clicking a button.

What people don’t like:

The customer support. The process for getting in touch with a company rep is unclear and overly burdensome.

That it sometimes slows down sites. Several users have complained that the browser and its features throttle their connection.

Final Verdict & Recommendation

Brave isn’t a specialist among VPN providers, so it relies on Guardian to provide this feature in its browser. It’s also why the functionality is limited compared to some of the top dogs in the market.

For people who want more options and customizations, this is not the VPN for you. It doesn’t come with advanced features like double VPN or Onion over VPN, neither does it give you much leeway to toy around with configuration.

That said, we had a pretty positive overall experience with Brave. We didn’t ask it to do anything too taxing, but the connection speed was good and its VPN connection was easy to use, even if it remains fairly basic compared with rivals, while it successfully prevented DNS leaks or sites recording our IP address.

While it is worth noting that the number of Brave VPN servers (via Guardian) does seem to be growing all the time, it’s still way short of what you can get from the market leaders – who are also continuously upgrading their server network.

As long as you are in one of the covered regions though, it’s a great product for Brave browser users who want convenience and an easy-to-use setup out of the box alongside the browser’s separate free ad blocker, rather than people seeking advanced tuning.

Brave VPN for digital nomads: a practical checklist

The published price checked on September 2026 is $9.99 monthly or $99.99 annually, with a seven-day trial. The annual equivalent is about $8.33 per month, but the annual charge is paid as a single purchase. Confirm the checkout currency, tax and renewal terms. See Brave’s current VPN product details.

Does it protect other apps?

The VPN covers device traffic, rather than only pages opened in Brave. That does not remove application-level tracking, account logins or phishing risks. Keep devices updated and use strong account authentication alongside it.

Can I use it for client work?

Ask your employer or client which VPN and access controls they require. A consumer VPN is not a replacement for a company-managed connection. Test required websites, video meetings and upload workflows on your actual connection before relying on it for a deadline.

What should I test during the trial?

Check login and reconnection, calls on accommodation Wi‑Fi, access to the services you use, whether the service needs the Brave browser installed on each device you plan to use, the handling of DNS requests, and the connection controls available on your operating system. Record cancellation instructions before the trial ends. Do not assume uninstalling the browser cancels a paid subscription.

Will streaming always work?

No provider can promise every catalogue will remain accessible. Services change their detection methods and licence restrictions. Treat the original successful tests as historical observations and use services according to their terms.