Quick Info
Brave Search is a privacy-focused search engine developed by Brave Software, launched in beta in 2021. Its core mission is to offer an independent, private alternative to traditional search engines by building its own anonymous search index, known as the Web Discovery Project (formerly Tailcat), rather than relying on or aggregating results from tech giants like Google or Microsoft.
Key characteristics:
- Privacy-first: Brave Search does not track users, their queries, or clicks. It does not profile users for advertising purposes.
- Independent Index: It strives to deliver results primarily from its own index, aiming for transparency and censorship resistance. While it can use fallback results for less common queries, its primary goal is to grow its own content.
- Ad-free by default: Users experience an ad-free search experience.
- Brave Rewards integration (optional): Users of the Brave Browser can opt into Brave Rewards, earning Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) for viewing privacy-preserving ads. This model is more tied to the browser and its content creators, but it demonstrates Brave's alternative monetization approach.
- Goggles: A unique feature allowing users to create or apply custom ranking filters to search results.
- Transparency: Offers a "Search Independence" metric showing how much of a result comes from Brave's own index versus fallback sources.
Brave Search is integrated seamlessly into the Brave Browser, but is also available as a standalone search engine for any browser. It aims to provide a fast, secure, and unbiased search experience while protecting user data.