Brave VPN Review: For Dedicated Brave Users Only (2026)

Brave is well-known for its privacy-first browser. It’s carved out a decent market share, competing with Firefox and Chrome by building privacy features into the browser by default. You name it: built-in ad blocking, anti-fingerprinting, and tracker shields, Brave has it.

Brave VPN has been built in collaboration with Guardian, an iOS security organization. Guardian already operates over 300 servers and has a reputation for privacy-first architecture, which fits right in with Brave’s approach to the browser. As a result, Brave VPN already has a strong no-logs policy backed by an existing third-party audit, which puts it ahead of most new entries to the VPN space.

What really sets Brave VPN apart is adding a firewall to the VPN, which monitors and blocks tracker data from being sent by any app on your device. Even though it’s browser-based, Brave VPN is powerful enough to be a comprehensive privacy solution.

That all sounds great, but now for the real question: is Brave VPN actually any good? Read on, and we’ll break down how it performs, whether it can keep up with the titans of the VPN industry, and whether you should rely on it as your primary VPN.

Brave Firewall + VPN Overview

Brave VPN is priced at $9.99/month, which is about average for the VPN industry. If you buy a yearly subscription, the price drops slightly to $99.99/year (which is approximately $8.33/month).

You can also try it out with a 7-day free trial, although it’s a little misleading. You’ll need to sign up and provide a valid payment method before the trial starts, so in practice, it’s closer to the 30-day money-back guarantee most VPN providers offer. If you don’t cancel during the subscription during the trial period, you’ll be charged.

Brave VPN comes with two VPN protocols: WireGuard (with ChaCha20 encryption) and IKEv2/IPSec (with AES-256 encryption). These are both trusted across the industry for having high security as well as great performance on portable devices and high speeds.

The Guardian-powered server network covers 40+ locations in 28 countries across 300+ servers. For reference, providers like NordVPN and Surfshark offer thousands of servers and upwards of 100 countries. Brave VPN has a much smaller global coverage, but it’s sufficient for basic geo-switching in Europe, the US, and Asia.

Brave VPN is also pretty impressive from a privacy architecture standpoint. Its anonymous credentialing system means Brave cannot determine whether a specific account has ever connected, when it connected, or what data was transmitted. Plus, their no-logs policy has been independently verified by Assured in 2024, so you can trust it’s legit.

It’s not all positives, though. Brave VPN is based in San Francisco, USA, which places it squarely within the 5 Eyes jurisdiction.

Brave VPN Pros

1. A Major VPN With a Server-Side Firewall

Most VPNs perform two major services. They encrypt your internet traffic while routing it through a remote server, and they keep you safe against malware by blocking it at the DNS level.

Brave goes a step further by adding a full firewall into the mix. Of course, the VPN provides you with privacy when connecting to the internet through one of Brave’s VPN servers. While your traffic is being routed through Brave VPN, it goes through a separate firewall server that protects you against a range of threats in real time. This keeps ad networks from being able to track you across different sites, as Brave VPN stops all of that unwanted traffic before it ever contacts your computer.

2. Industry-Leading Privacy Architecture

Brave VPN goes one step further to prove that its no-logs policy does what it says on the tin. Most VPNs ask you to trust that they’re handling your data in a safe way. A no-logs privacy policy is great, but it’s not like you can go to a VPN’s data center and ask to see that they’re not logging your internet traffic.

However, because Brave VPN uses Guardian as the underlying VPN provider, its no-logs policy is backed by an independent audit carried out in 2024 by Assured. Assured is a respected third-party security firm, so their no-logs seal of approval carries some weight.

On top of a recent third-party audit, Brave has implemented a structural, cryptographic approach to anonymity that makes logging difficult by design.

When you sign up for Brave VPN, the system uses a pseudonymous credentialing process. To put it simply, when you buy a subscription to Brave VPN, your payment is processed, and you’re given an anonymous generic token that proves one thing only: you’ve paid for the service. It doesn’t tell Brave who paid, just that you’re authorized to use the service.

Brave can verify that your subscription is active, but cannot determine whether you have ever actually connected to the VPN, when you connected, what server you used, or what data you transmitted.

This means that even if Brave is required by law to hand over your data, it would be impossible for them to link your payment details to your Brave account or your internet traffic.

3. Seamlessly Integrated Into the Brave Browser Ecosystem

If you already use the Brave browser, loading up the VPN could not be simpler. All you have to do is sign in with your Brave account inside the browser and purchase a VPN subscription from Brave’s site. After that, the VPN integration is completely frictionless.

There’s no separate app to download. You activate it directly from within the browser with a single toggle. After that, all of the traffic on your device is protected by Brave.

It makes a lot of sense if you’re already invested in the Brave ecosystem. Most of Brave’s other products are integrated into the browser already, so adding a VPN feels like a natural extension of Brave’s privacy platform. Plus, Brave will support payment in BAT (Brave’s native cryptocurrency) in the future.

Changing locations is also as easy as can be. All you have to do is click on the browser add-on and select the location you’re currently connected to. Then, you’ll get a menu showing you all of Brave VPN’s 40 locations you can connect to.

Brave VPN is available on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. A Linux version is in development. Setup takes under a minute on all supported platforms, and the VPN auto-connects on launch if configured to do so.

4. Top-Tier Encryption

Brave VPN doesn’t cut corners on the technical side of security. It supports two best-in-class encryption stacks:

• WireGuard: A modern, ultra-fast protocol that’s built to provide VPN tunnels without all of the overhead and bloat of OpenVPN. It’s ideal for use on mobile devices, especially as it uses the ChaCha20 encryption library, which is still efficient when AES hardware acceleration isn’t available.
• IKEv2/IPSec: The same encryption standard used by governments and militaries worldwide. IKEv2 uses AES-256 encryption, which keeps your internet traffic secure against snooping. It’s particularly useful if you’re frequently switching between Wi-Fi and mobile data.

Both protocols are considered top-tier across the VPN industry, so full marks for security here. We’ve seen plenty of VPNs that use outdated and insecure VPN protocols, but Brave is clearly thinking safety first.

5. Powered by Guardian

Brave VPN is essentially a browser add-on for Guardian VPN. Partnering with Guardian is a smart choice for Brave VPN, as it allows them to deploy a VPN product out of the box that already has some impressive security and privacy credentials behind it.

Guardian itself is a security company founded by Will Strafach in 2013. Strafach has an impressive pedigree as a security researcher: he’s most well-known for exposing AccuWeather’s unauthorized location data sharing in 2017.

As for Guardian’s VPN product, it’s fairly impressive on a technical level. Guardian operates a  300+ server network with 10 Gbps uplink connections on most nodes.

In contrast to most no-logs VPN providers, Guardian actually doesn’t use RAM-only servers. Their justification is that diskless servers need to contact a central authentication authority to prove you have a valid subscription, which is a potential privacy fault. Instead, Guardian makes sure you can’t be attributed to any VPN server you’re using by verifying anonymized “proof of purchase” data. What this means is that there is persistent data held on their servers, but it’s not useful for tracking individual VPN users.

Guardian also controls the actual bare-metal hardware used to run these servers. There’s no third-party risk from renting out servers from a data center.

Guardian was also acquired by DNSFilter in 2022. They’re a well-funded network security company, and their expertise is well-suited to improving Guardian’s VPN product, so we’re not particularly concerned about the acquisition.

6. Covers Up to 10 Devices Simultaneously

One Brave VPN subscription covers up to 10 simultaneous devices, provided each has the Brave browser installed. That’s about the industry average if your provider doesn’t have an unlimited subscription policy.

Brave offers a VPN in the browser on iOS, Windows, Android, and macOS.

One downside here is that because it’s a browser-based VPN, you don’t have the option to install it on a router and cover all of your devices while counting as just one device for the limit.

7. Solid Speeds for Everyday Browsing and Streaming

Guardian’s 10 Gbps server infrastructure applies to Brave VPN as well, so we have high expectations.

That’s why we’ve loaded up our own testing rig with a 250Mbps download and upload line to see how Brave VPN actually performs in real-world scenarios. We’re fairly impressed, but there are a few results that gave us pause for concern.

Baseline

• Download: 252.01Mbps
• Upload: 251.63Mbps
• Ping: 1ms

Nearest Server

• Download: 241.89Mbps
• Upload: 242.74Mbps
• Ping: 9ms

Europe

• Download: 238.92Mbps
• Upload: 241.04Mbps
• Ping: 26ms

Asia

• Download: 199.67Mbps
• Upload: 4.65Mbps
• Ping: 274ms

US East

• Download: 197.40Mbps
• Upload: 228.49Mbps
• Ping: 98ms

US West

• Download: 163.00Mbps
• Upload: 206.65Mbps
• Ping: 1ms

So, the results are kind of a mixed bag. On the plus side, Brave VPN is fantastically fast when connecting to nearby servers. Really, the speeds we’re seeing from connecting to European servers are among the best results we’ve seen this year, even from top-tier VPN providers.

We’re less impressed with the US results. Some speed loss is to be expected, but roughly 35% speed loss to US West isn’t great. We don’t expect to see more than 20%, usually.

Also, the upload speeds for Asia are basically unusable. This is on a high-speed line, so we can only imagine how much worse it is if you’re on a slower broadband line.

Basically, Brave VPN performs well enough to handle HD streaming in 4K, as well as browsing and high-speed file sharing over P2P. Just don’t be surprised if your connection slows down significantly when you’re connecting halfway across the world.

8. P2P and Torrenting Supported

Brave VPN permits P2P file sharing and torrenting across its server network. There aren’t any P2P optimized servers, so you’ll get roughly the same performance no matter which server you connect to.

Guardian’s privacy structure and no-logs audit make Brave VPN one of the better choices for torrenting, but this comes with a caveat. Brave VPN doesn’t support port forwarding, so you will necessarily get less connectivity in a torrent swarm than if you were using a provider like Proton VPN that allows it.

We also expect that any tracking telemetry sent by torrent clients would be blocked by Guardian’s built-in firewall, adding just that little bit of extra privacy on top of hiding your home IP.

9. Passed Leak Tests

Brave VPN’s already been extensively audited by Assured, but it’s also worth performing additional tests. Plus, we want to be certain whether a VPN actually protects your IP before recommending it to you.

So, we’ve put Brave VPN through a series of VPN leak tests designed to show whether it leaks your IP through IPv4, IPv6, WebRTC, and DNS.

First of all, we headed over to IPLeaks.net to see whether it adequately protects your IP address. As you can see, we are asigned a different IP address, and Brave VPN also uses alternative Cloudflare’s DNS servers.

We’ve also put Brave VPN through a DNS test on BrowserLeaks.com just to double-check. Again, nothing but Cloudflare.

WebRTC is the protocol used to allow browsers to easily talk to each other. It’s also notorious for sending traffic outside of your VPN tunnel, causing your real IP address to be disclosed to the other participants in voice calls and other browser-to-browser programs. Brave VPN is pretty well-placed to ensure this doesn’t happen, and our results confirm that WebRTC doesn’t leak your IP when Brave VPN is enabled.

Brave VPN successfully passed all our standard leak tests.

Brave VPN added a kill switch to its supported platforms with the 1.82 version update. We tested Brave earlier than that, so we will be updating kill switch tests in the future.

10. 7-Day Free Trial Available

Brave VPN offers a 7-day free trial on all plans, giving you a full week to evaluate the service before being charged. The trial is available on both monthly and annual plans. Note that a valid payment method is required to activate the trial, and you must cancel before the 7 days are up to avoid being charged.

Brave VPN Cons

1. Based in the USA 

This is the most significant privacy caveat with Brave VPN. Both Brave Software and Guardian are headquartered in San Francisco, California. This places them squarely under US jurisdiction and within the 5 Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance.

US companies can be compelled to hand over user data to the government fairly easily if it’s in the interest of national security.

Brave’s argument is that their no-logs policy and anonymous credentialing system make it nigh impossible to link a user’s data to their payments. That might be true, but until we see it battle-tested in court (like PIA has done multiple times), we’re a little uncomfortable with Brave’s situation.

We suspect this is also why Brave VPN is limited in certain regions. Currently, you can’t use Brave VPN in the following countries:

2. Unreliable for Streaming

Brave VPN does not market itself as a streaming VPN. It doesn’t host dedicated streaming servers, and you’re unlikely to be able to coax support into doing anything if you complain that you can’t watch Netflix.

We took Brave VPN for a quick test to see how it handled some streaming sites for ourselves, and we ended up with mixed results.

We were able to stream content through Disney+, which isn’t exactly easy to unblock. That’s a point in Brave VPN’s favor.

However, we weren’t able to unblock HBO through Amazon’s streaming service. It immediately detected that we were using a VPN, unfortunately.

We’re still testing other streaming services, but from wider research, we’ve seen that other users have had trouble loading Netflix US, Netflix UK, and BBC iPlayer, which failed to load through Brave VPN connections.

Ultimately, we believe that the service is not equipped with the constantly refreshed IP pools it needs to stay ahead of Netflix’s VPN ban waves.

3. Requires the Brave Browser To Be Installed

Brave VPN is kind of a double-edged sword. If you use Brave already, great! If you don’t, you’ll have to switch browsers. That’s actually incredibly inconvenient and pretty much no other VPN in the industry expects this from you.

While plenty of providers offer browser add-ons, you’re rarely required to use one to get VPN functionality. NordVPN works inside a separate client, so does Surfshark, so does Express, and so on. They’re designed to be easy to use as separate programs, and while Brave VPN is also easy to use, it’s either the Brave Browser or the highway.

4. Missing Advanced VPN Features

This is arguably Brave VPN’s biggest problem. The VPN industry has since advanced past just providing a rock-solid VPN connection. It now offers additional benefits, like anti-malware protection and dark web monitoring.

For example, NordVPN throws in a fully-fledged anti-virus solution that competes with the very best dedicated AV programs. Surfshark offers a ton of unique privacy tools like a private search engine and throwaway ID generation. ExpressVPN has upped its game and built a privacy ecosystem that competes with Proton’s range of tools.

Whereas Brave VPN offers the absolute basics in terms of VPN functionality.

Think about just the basics that you’d expect from a top-tier VPN:

• Split tunneling
• Multi-hop servers
• Obfuscation protocols
• Dedicated IPs
• Linux support
• Streaming servers

These are all missing from Brave VPN. You’re paying a lot of money for the most basic set of features.

5. Expensive Relative to What You Get

At $99.99/year, Brave VPN is priced at the premium end of the market. NordVPN and ExpressVPN offer similar price plans. Unlike those providers, Brave VPN offers a significantly smaller server network, no guarantees for streaming support, and almost no advanced features outside of server-side firewall integration.

If you aren’t already tapped into the Brave ecosystem, you won’t find any reason to switch based on the price. If you’re looking for a budget VPN, you’re better off sticking with something like PrivadoVPN.

6. No Formal Refund Policy

Brave VPN does not offer a real money-back guarantee. There’s a 7-day trial window, but this is much shorter than the industry standard of 30 days. If you forget to cancel your subscription, then you’re out of luck.

While it might be possible to get a refund after this trial period, it’s completely at the discretion of Brave’s support team. CyberGhost offers an extensive 45-day money-back guarantee period, so if you need more time to evaluate a VPN’s performance, they’re a better choice than Brave VPN.

7. No Live Chat Support

Brave VPN support is handled through a help center, community forums, and support ticket submissions. There is no 24/7 live chat option. For the price you’re paying, you would expect the same sort of premium live support you’d get from ExpressVPN.

While the community forums are active and useful for common issues, they’re not a real replacement for dedicated support staff.

Pricing: Subscription Plans, Payment Options, and Money-Back Guarantee

Brave VPN is relatively expensive for what it offers. You pay $9.99/month or $8.33/month if you buy into the yearly plan, which works out at $99.99 overall. The yearly plan also includes two months free, but it’s still far less impressive than the deals providers like NordVPN and Surfshark offer for long-term subscriptions.

There’s no 30-day money-back guarantee, either. All you get is the 7-day free trial.

Should You Buy Brave VPN?

Probably not.

In short: We’d like to recommend Brave VPN, but for most people, we simply can’t. It’s just too expensive for what it is unless you’re a die-hard Brave user who wants a VPN baked into their browser. And you’re willing to spend a premium for it. Otherwise, the benefits simply don’t justify the cost.

Don’t get us wrong, the combination of a firewall and VPN is pretty unique. Unfortunately, it kind of reads like marketing fluff instead of a genuine benefit. Most of the time, you’re not going to be able to tell the firewall is active. There are also plenty of other VPN services out there that offer integrated malware blocking services with more extensive security features built in.

We do think the anonymous credentialing system is genuinely clever, but Brave VPN isn’t the first VPN provider to pull this trick out of the bag. ExpressVPN has already trialed something similar.  That said, Brave VPN seems genuinely secure thanks to its partnership with Guardian.

But ultimately, Brave VPN won’t provide what most people are looking for in a VPN.  There are too many restrictions on its use, not enough features, and it doesn’t have the locations or the feature set of comparably priced VPNs. Plus, it’s US-based in a 5 Eyes jurisdiction.

Bottom Line: Brave VPN is a decent VPN if only you’re already using the Brave browser and want a “set it and forget it” privacy solution. If that’s not you, then check out our top recommendations instead.

Alternative Recommendations:

• For streaming: NordVPN or ExpressVPN
• For budget-conscious users: Surfshark
• The best free VPN: ProtonVPN
• Need a 45-day money-back guarantee: CyberGhost
• Servers in all 50 states: Private Internet Access