When comparing Brave vs GNOME Web, the Slant community recommends Brave for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop web browsers?” Brave is ranked 9th while GNOME Web is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose Brave is:
Released to the community under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), this software respect the FSF's four freedoms, including the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute with or without modification freely.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free/libre software
Released to the community under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), this software respect the FSF's four freedoms, including the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute with or without modification freely.
Pro Option to disable additional privacy concerns
Like fingerprint tracking.
Pro Takes care of privacy and security
Takes privacy seriously by blocking ads and trackers and not tracking people's searches. Things like HTTPS everywhere and no tracking are standard with Brave. In most other browsers, things like these are optional at best.
Pro Built-in adblocking
Other apps make it difficult to block ads without rooting your phone or going through unoptimized add-on stores, but Link Bubble blocks them out of the box, making browsing much less crowded. Contains an optional "Allow Brave Acceptable Ads" So you can support the site you truly enjoy.
Pro Optional feature for you to get reimbursed for viewing ads
Basic Attention Token; you can decide to opt into a new blockchain-based digital advertising system, giving publishers a better deal and users a share of the ad revenue for their attention.
Pro Now supports Chrome Webstore
It's now a faster, less intrusive Chrome.
Pro Tor is available right in the browser
Private Window with Tor hides your IP address from the sites you visit.
Pro Faster than Google Chrome
Brave consistently beats Chrome in speed, might have to do with less tracking being run in the background.
Pro Very fast
The fastest browser out there.
Pro Sync is now available
Option to synchronize data between devices using peer-to-peer connections. No sign-in required, only a sync code.
Pro Option to pay supported sites based on view time percentage
Set up automatic micro-donations. Brave will automatically divide a monthly donation among the top sites you visit.
And/or, you can decide which sites get what percentage of your donation. It’s called pinning.
Pro Supports the latest technologies
Brave regularly adds new functionalities like decentralized domain support and a native crypto wallet long before Chrome considers them. These features to be disabled in settings.
Pro Developed by creator of Mozilla and Javascript
Pro Cross-platform Web Browser
Brave is available on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS
Pro Fits in perfectly with the GNOME desktop
Since it is a GNOME app, you get all the benefits of the GNOME desktop. It's easy to use, Epiphany just works out of the box. It stores your web site passwords in the secure GNOME keyring, and uses your existing desktop settings to launch applications and access the network, so you don't need to configure everything twice.
Pro Excellent alternative to the most popular web browsers
Sometimes my workflow involves using separate browsers. I like mail in app tabs, but some jobs are well suited to a lighter, simpler web browser.
Pro GNOME integrated
Includes features specific to GNOME like turning sites into apps that are managed with GNOME software and the ability to install GNOME extensions.
Pro For Linux and Windows
Available for Linux and Windows 10 with WSL, see here.
Pro Lightweight
Epiphany is pretty lightweight and doesn't require much memory to start up.
Pro Best touchpad navigation
Pinch to zoom, smooth bidirectional scrolling are still far beyond other browsers.
Pro Default in many GNOME versions
Epiphany has been the default browsers for many distributions that use stock GNOME for a long time now (although it's being replaced by the much more popular Firefox lately).
Cons
Con Brave is an Ad company
Brave Software is a for-profit company (though users must opt into Brave ads and Brave doesn't track users.)
Con Download package is very large considering it as a browser
Brave takes on a lot of roles besides just browsing so it is understandably a larger file.
Con Useless built-in 'ad blocker'
Its adblocker is useless to be honest. Since the extension uBlock Origin is a great blocker by itself, the Brave ad blocker does not block every ad!
Con Quite intrusive advertisements, especially on Windows
Advertisements keep popping up in the Windows notification center. Must opt in to ad system, but no option to disable sound for ad notifications only.
Con Still dependent on Google
Since it's based on Chrome.
Con Uses much RAM
1 tab, 400+ RAM, also it depends on what website you're on.
Con Same security-holes as Chrome
On the desktop: Brave uses the same browser engine as Chrome, meaning it has the same security-holes as Chrome. Chrome is a big target for hackers (being the most popular browser in the world), and a webpage that will hack Chrome may also hack Brave.
However, Brave has security features that Chrome doesn't (such as a built-in adblocker). Those features will stop many hacking attempts.
Con Doesn't remove search engine ads
Con No reader view
Can be accessed with an extension though.
Con Dumbed down in the latest versions
In previous versions, Brave felt more like Firefox. Now it's been dumbed down, it feels more like Chrome/Chromium. For example: There's no menu-bar.
Con The iPhone version has some odd behavior
On reopening Brave, it often returns you to the "search results" page, rather than the webpage you had previously browsed to from the search results page. Might just be a specific configuration.
Con Cache dump
Doesn't clear cache well, shows same page even after emptying it until you ctrl+F5 to get fresh page every time you visit the page(s).
Con A browser for NFT-ers(?)
There would be less of a problem with using Web3 solutions if they weren't sometimes looking like an art for art's sake, a jerkcircle shoving down it's own topic down the users' throat. Replacing the Web 2.0 with another commercial solution is bound to end up as a reinvention of the wheel, where even more commercialization and direct monetization will push digital exclusion. Non-profit open source community has achieved great things while so far NFTs and cryptos are, not without a reason, ridiculed.
Con Sync issues
Unable to sync extensions, no cloud sync (only device sync).
Con Appearance
No options to customize apperance, and make the bookmarks appear on the home page, for instance.
Con Creator support limited
Most creators don't use it and so will not profit from the crypto system.
Con Poor Customer Support
Only customer support available in Brave community. Mods usually does not help.
Con Promotes search engines that track users such as Bing and Google
Google Search is the first search engine on the list.
Con Bookmark management
Bookmark management is not as seamless as other browsers.
Con No cloud sync like Firefox
Con Power hungry, uses much more battery power than other browsers
Per default Brave enables hardware acceleration which results in a much higher energy (battery) consumption than the most other web browsers.
Con Hypocritical/deceptive stance on privacy and advertisement
Brave is advertised as a browser that respects your privacy and blocks ads while still supporting content creators. However, at the same time the company is making deals with Facebook, Twitter and others to whitelist their trackers and ads
Con Bookmark button located on the left side of the URL bar and can't be moved
Con Crashes often
Epiphany can crash on a heavy load or when closing/opening tabs. While this only happens every few days, it still happens more often than in most other browsers.
Con Not much room for configuration
The choice for extensions is very limited, although there are decent extensions for the most useful activities and features it still cannot compare to the extensive collections that other browsers may have access to.
The number of tweaks that can be done to the browser from the options menu is also very limited since Epiphany follows a philosophy of "less is more". While this can be enjoyable for some it still hinders a lot of functionality and removes the ability to personalize the browser the way you want it to be.
Con Becomes messy on highly graphical pages
Sometimes struggles to handle complex graphical pages such as Facebook. In these circumstances, it becomes 'messy' - text and graphics get mixed up - and will eventually crash. Even so, this is a light and useful browser.
Con Tends to lag on large pages
Open this page in Epiphany and start zooming/scrolling quickly to see what it.