- Category
- Search · SaaS alternative
- Cost
- Freemium
- Country
- US
- Licensing
- Proprietary
Pros and cons
+ what works
- +Own index, not a Bing or Google reseller, one of the few western alternatives with this property
- +No IP logging or behavioral profiling by default
- +Tight integration with Brave Browser, which is already in this catalog
- +Public API with a small free credit allowance for developers and self-hosted projects
− watch out for
- −Closed source backend, privacy claims rest on policy rather than audit
- −US jurisdiction, subject to US subpoenas, NSLs, and gag orders
- −Optional Google fallback mixer is still available, users who enable it leak queries to Google client-side
- −Sibling products from Brave Software have a checkered trust record (2020 affiliate-link injection in the browser, ongoing BAT/Rewards friction) which colors perception even when the search product is clean
- −Result quality outside English still trails Google for many queries
Privacy notes
Brave Search does not log IP addresses or build user profiles by default, and ads on the results page are contextual to the query rather than profile-based. Results are served from Brave's own index, built on the Tailcat technology Brave acquired from Cliqz in 2021 and grown via the opt-in Web Discovery Project that contributes anonymized browsing data from Brave Browser users. Bing fallback was removed in 2023; an opt-in Google fallback mixer remains available for queries with thin coverage, with mixing happening client-side. Brave Software Inc. is a Delaware company based in San Francisco, so US legal process applies.
Tags
#us · #independent-index · #api · #web-discovery-project
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