Chromium is the open-source project on which Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Edge are based. It’s fully compatible with Chrome extensions and any website that works on Chrome or Edge should work the same on Chromium.

Google, Microsoft, and others take the Chromium browser base and add their own tracking, data-collection, and advertising anti-features as well as interface skins. Given Chromium’s “vanilla” status, it can feel a little bare-boned. Yet all the core features are there in a user-friendly and cutting-edge package.

Pros:

• Free and open source: the Chromium code base is available for audit at any time, there are no anti-features like tracking or other malware hidden behind proprietary code.
• A simple, fast browser: Chromium is like a blank canvas for advanced users to customize as they see fit.
• Compatible with Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge: you get all the benefits of “going with the flow” and joining the vast majority of users without exposing yourself to all the privacy risks of using the tech giants’ products.

Cons:

• Not set up for private browsing out of the box: although Chromium won’t spy on you, it won’t actively protect your privacy to the same extent as Firefox does out of the box.

Requires some knowledge to configure for private browsing: even though configuring Chromium is a straightforward process, casual users might not know which settings to change or which extensions to install.

Brave is a Chromium-based browser that’s very much focused on privacy. Much like Google and Microsoft add features to Chromium to undermine users’ privacy, Brave Browser builds on the Chromium base to enhance privacy and security. Brave is ready to go right out of the box, at least as far as privacy features like ad blocking are concerned.

Brave also adds some controversial features, like an alternative advertising model based on a cryptographic token known as the Basic Attention Token (BAT). This model sees website owners’ ads blocked and de facto replaced by Brave’s own ads. Users can earn BAT by viewing these ads and then use these tokens to tip their favorite creators.

The good news is that these ads and the associated BAT elements can easily be disabled in the settings, leaving users with a clean, ad-free browsing experience. The initial “crypto bro” atmosphere that welcomes new users can be off-putting to those who don’t know how to adjust these settings.

Pros:

• Compatible with Chrome: anything that works on Chrome should work on Brave, unlike Firefox which may, very occasionally, fail to load non-standard websites.
• Visually stunning: Brave, especially when all the crypto elements are disabled, offers a very sleek user experience, with nice touches like randomized wallpapers on new tabs.
• Ad blocking right out of the box: Brave allows users to quickly and easily modify privacy settings without having to dig around in settings menus. Shields can be raised or lowered with a couple of clicks.
• Encrypted synchronization between devices: sync your bookmarks, browsing history, and even open tabs between devices, safely and securely.

Cons:

• Crypto: users who find all things crypto off-putting will have to take a few extra steps to purge the crypto elements from their setup.

Web standards: using a Chromium-based browser buttresses Google’s disproportionate influence over web standards.

If you want to see why we picked Brave over DuckDuckGo, check out this resource

The Tor Browser rounds out our top five, but it’s not recommended for most users. This browser is built first and foremost to allow users to safely access the TOR (The Onion Router) network, commonly known as the dark web or darknet.

Websites ending in .onion can only be accessed through Tor Browser or one of its forks. Connections made through TOR are routed through a series of nodes, like the layers of an onion, providing an extremely high level of anonymity. The major downside is that this leads to very long load times and generally a very rudimentary browsing experience.

Darknet sites and the TOR protocol are indispensable to journalists, activists, whistleblowers, and others who might come under undue governmental duress or scrutiny. The same technology is also used by criminals to avoid detection, so your ISP detecting your use of TOR could bring unwanted police attention.

Tor Browser can be used to surf the clearnet (normal HTTP websites as opposed to .onion sites), but it’s not the most efficient or user-friendly tool for the job. It does, however, provide excellent privacy protection even when used on the clearnet (although it can’t provide anything like the same levels of anonymity as the TOR protocol can).

Pros:

• Extremely private by default: Tor Browser resists fingerprinting and blocks scripts by default, as well as clearing cookies and its cache upon session completion.
• Based on Firefox: Tor browser keeps pace with Firefox’s security patches, as heavily modified as it is.
• The best way to access the darknet: Tor Browser remains the standard and most secure way to access .onion sites.
• Open source: it’s particularly important that a protocol like TOR is open to public scrutiny, including the client (browser).

Cons:

• Not the best option for clearnet browsing: Tor Browser wasn’t designed with regular internet browsing in mind and doesn’t offer the most user-friendly experience as a result.

May flag users already under surveillance: unless you take special precautions, your ISP (and hence government) may be able to deduce that you’re connecting to the TOR network.

Popular web browsers to avoid if privacy is a priority

Depending on your device and operating system, you might be wondering why the default browser that came with your system didn’t make the cut. You might also have seen other browsers being recommended elsewhere that aren’t in our top five. Here are some of the more popular browsers and why we don’t recommend them.

Apple has an amazing marketing department. Many of its fans are convinced that its products are made with the users’ privacy in mind. Apple’s browser, Safari, is a great example of a browser that’s very secure, but not necessarily private.

Apple famously restricts third parties’ access to its users’ data, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t collect and use that data for its own purposes. With proprietary software like Safari (of which only the WebKit engine is open source), there’s no way to be completely sure the program isn’t doing something nefarious in the background.

Another great example of a browser that’s secure but not private, Google Chrome fails to make the list because of the many privacy concerns it raises. Alphabet, the company behind Google, makes huge amounts of revenue through targeted advertising and the data analytics that go into it.

Chrome is based on Chromium, one of our top five private browsers, but it’s the proprietary code Google adds that keeps us from recommending it. Google Chrome is known to collect data on its users. This browser, like all Google products, is not recommended for the privacy-conscious.

Microsoft Edge is also based on Chromium and, like with Chrome, it’s the proprietary code Microsoft slaps on top of the Chromium base that’s the problem. Microsoft has a reputation for some pretty aggressive data collection practices as well as some spectacular data breaches across its product lines.

This makes Microsoft Edge both a privacy and a security concern. Although much better than Internet Explorer (Microsoft’s previous browser), it still falls far short of our top picks.

Russian owned and operated, both the browser and search engine are best avoided.

Opera browser has been owned by a Chinese consortium since 2016. Although its founders seem to have solid records and good intentions, the potential for Chinese Communist Party influence presents too great a risk. Luckily, there are many other great options out there. 

How to prevent your browsing habits from being your undoing

The right browser will protect you from third parties and the prying eyes—and sticky fingers—of Big Tech. What it generally can’t protect you from is your own bad habits when browsing the web. Here’s what you can do to not become your own worst enemy:

Choose a good search engine and make it your default

Most private web browsers already ship with a private search engine, but there are exceptions. Firefox, for example, shipped with Google as the default search engine for years. Get into the habit of using private search engines like Searx, DuckDuckGo, and Startpage and set your favorite one as the default.

Take control of your browser’s privacy and security settings

Choosing a browser from our top five will leave you with a privacy-respecting setup right out of the box. That doesn’t mean you won’t need to finesse some security settings or fiddle with some privacy features to find just the right balance between privacy and convenience.

Be careful when adding extensions or add-ons to your browser

Incogni recently showed that one in two Chrome extensions are poised to wreak havoc on your digital privacy and security. This is directly relevant to anyone using Chromium or Brave (both use Chrome extensions), but Firefox doesn’t fare much better with its add-ons.

Add only trusted extensions and make doubly sure you’re actually downloading the extension you think you’re downloading—malicious lookalikes are rife and easy to fall for.

Use a good password manager to generate and store strong passwords

Having your accounts hacked will do nothing good for your data privacy. Protect all your accounts—from that one-time online shopping account you’ll never use again to your social media accounts—with a trusted password manager.

Firefox has encrypted password management built right into the browser, but we recommend using a specialized password manager like NordPass or Bitwarden.

Use a trusted VPN when on untrusted networks

A good, no-logs VPN service will stop man-in-the-middle attacks and thwart tracking attempts while you’re connected to public WiFi. It will also stop your ISP from being able to analyze your network traffic and figure out what you’re doing online.

The VPN you choose has to be more trustworthy than your ISP for this approach to make sense, though. We recommend Surfshark for most users—it offers a no-log VPN service at a very competitive price. Avoid free VPNs as they often generate revenue by monetizing your browsing data.

Privacy vs security

Privacy and security are two very different concepts. Browsers like Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and Microsoft’s Edge are relatively secure, but not private. A secure web browser is well-protected against attacks from third parties.

Secure browsers protect your browsing data, including your browsing history and search history, against hackers and anyone else who would want access to your data. Private browsers, on the other hand, are designed in such a way that even the company responsible for them doesn’t have access to users’ browsing data.

It’s not easy to hack into a secure browser like Google Chrome, so your personal data is generally safe from unauthorized access by third parties. The problem, from a privacy perspective, is that Google has full access to your data. Using a secure browser is a must, but for full protection, it has to be private as well.

What to look for in a private browser

FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)

Perhaps the most important thing to look out for—a private browser can only be truly and reliably privacy-respecting if its code base is fully open source. This means that anyone can look through the code at any time. Even if you don’t have the skills to audit the code yourself, you can feel safer knowing that thousands of people who do are poring over it.

That’s the “open source” part of FOSS. The “free” part is “free as in freedom” rather than “free as in beer,” and refers to the licensing agreement under which the software is made available. Although not crucial, the most reliably private browsers are permissively licensed. All the browsers on our list also happen to be “free as in beer,” meaning they’re available free of charge.

Security features

The line between privacy and security features is blurred in many places: many of the features that make a browser private also make it more secure. A secure web browser is first and foremost one that runs on an actively maintained engine, in which security vulnerabilities are discovered and patched quickly.

Other security features include malware protection, sandboxing, and the kinds of tracking protections described below. In fact, all the privacy features described below make for a more secure browser. Browsers that generate revenue by exploiting user data often have to sacrifice privacy to do so, something that inevitably affects security as well.

Privacy features

The most secure browser in the world won’t protect you from the company behind it. A relatively secure browser like Safari or Chrome protects its users from third parties fairly well, but leaves them completely vulnerable to Apple and Google, respectively. 

Ad blocking is a must if you want a clean, private browsing experience. Blocking incoming and outgoing connections to ad-serving networks will stop websites from getting plastered with and streamed videos interrupted by irritating and unsightly ads. It also makes websites load faster and saves on bandwidth.

Fingerprinting protection stops companies from identifying you based on your browser settings, operating system, screen resolution, and even typing pace. The more your system differs from the average users’, the easier it is to fingerprint. Private browsers thwart some or all of the fingerprinting techniques used to identify (and stalk) you online.

Tracking protection makes it so that different websites and companies can’t follow you from site to site, building up a picture of your browsing habits. Cross-site tracking is one way that Meta, for example, knows what Facebook or Instagram ads to serve you.

Defaults

In one sense, the default settings a browser ships with don’t really matter: you can always change settings and enable or disable features to suit your needs. The problem is that the vast majority of people leave everything at the default settings. For this reason, we prefer those browsers that come with privacy-respecting defaults.

These include things like the default search engine. A private search engine is a must, as many of the benefits of a private browser are undermined the second you log into or even use Google Search, Yandex, or Bing. Look for a browser with a default search engine like DuckDuckGo or Startpage.

Other defaults that characterize private browsers have to do with things like blocking third-party cookies, broadcasting the do-not-track signal, deleting cookies at the end of each browsing session, disabling link prefetching and speculative connections, disabling autofill, and disabling search and form history.

Privacy and security settings

Regardless of what default settings a browser ships with, it’s crucial that you at least have the option of changing key privacy and security settings. Apple, for example, is infamous for depriving users of the ability to adjust more advanced settings. Once you have a sense of which settings are most important to you, make sure your chosen browser allows you to adjust them.

The more you lock down your browser, the greater the chances that some websites will “break,” meaning that elements won’t load properly, making them unusable. This balancing act between privacy and usability means that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Having access to a wide range of privacy and security settings means you can tailor your browser to your particular needs.

More privacy guides

• Best private browsers for Android
• Best iOS privacy browsers
• How to disappear completely from the internet
• How to turn private browsing off and on

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