Brave emphasizes ad-blocking and privacy. At the same time, it lets you earn cryptocurrency while you browse. Like the majority of modern browsers, Brave relies on a customized version of Chromium (the code that powers Google Chrome), so it’s compatible with most websites. Brave has higher goals than simply letting you hoard crypto or even protecting your privacy. Its creators want to achieve a revolution in the way web commerce works, with direct micropayments taking the place of rampant web ads. To earn cryptocurrency rewards with Brave, the software periodically pops up an unobtrusive ad in a box outside the browser window—you can turn it off if you prefer.

The EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool reports “strong protection against Web tracking.” A feature called Shields blocks third-party ads and tracking cookies by default. Brave forces the secure HTTPS (something common among recent browsers) and lets you choose between Standard and Aggressive tracker-blocking and ad-blocking. Brave also has advanced fingerprinting protections that “randomize the output of semi-identifying browser features” and turn off features that sites commonly use to sniff device info. In our brief tests, Brave was the only browser for which the EFF tool reported a randomized fingerprint. Brave offers other privacy-focused products, including for messaging, news, search, and video calling. A VPN option that cloaks all apps on your system costs $9.99 per month. The browser even now has generative AI tools that summarize web pages and generate text.

Platforms: Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows

The famed private search provider DuckDuckGo has a standalone desktop and mobile web browser. The Chromium-based browser boasts some design niceties. For example, a flame button at the top, sort of a panic button, lets you close tabs and delete browsing data instantly. The search bar is centered and on the same line as the back and forward navigation buttons for a clean and clear look. The new tab page offers custom site buttons and a list of previous sites you visited, with a count of how many trackers it found and blocked for each.

The browser also includes automatic cookie consent management for pop-ups and support for the emerging Global Privacy Control standard. It has Duck Player for playing YouTube videos without Google ads, which worked well in testing and could be reason enough to install the DuckDuckGo web browser.

You can also install the DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extension in your existing desktop browser to make it more private. It blocks third-party trackers, switches your search engine to its privacy-focused one, forces sites to use an encrypted HTTPS connection where available, and lets you see a privacy score for sites you visit. The extension raised Chrome’s score on the EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool to “strong protection,” which was also the score for the standalone DuckDuckGo browser.

Platforms: Android, iOS, macOS, Windows

Epic Privacy Browser includes VPN-like functionality with its encrypted proxy, which hides your IP address from the web at large. The company claims that Epic blocks ads, cryptomining, trackers, and even ultrasound signaling! It also blocks fingerprint tracking scripts and prevents WebRTC.

When you tap Epic’s umbrella button to enable the built-in version of uBlock, the EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool reports “strong protection” against web tracking, though with a unique browser fingerprint.

The browser’s interface looks almost identical to that of Chrome, aside from the included privacy and proxy extension buttons. Otherwise, it lacks special convenience features from competitors like Edge.

Platforms: Android, iOS, macOS, Windows

Mozilla has long been at the forefront of trying to improve privacy on the web. Its Firefox browser is a free and open-source alternative to other browsers that doesn’t use the Chromium code base. The company came up with the Do Not Track initiative, and Firefox was the first browser with a private browsing mode that could hide browsing not only from people with access to your device but also from the sites you visit. Firefox’s Total Cookie Protection places each site’s cookies in a separate web container to prevent sites from sharing your data.

The browser’s Enhanced Tracking Protection’s Standard setting blocks cross-site cookies in Private Windows, cross-site tracking cookies, cryptominers, fingerprinters, tracking content in Private Windows, and social media trackers. Firefox includes built-in support for the Global Privacy Control initiative that requests sites not share or sell your private data.

The EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool reports “strong protection against web tracking” at this setting. Strict mode blocks trackers hidden in ads, videos, and other site content. Firefox’s standard fingerprinting protection uses a list of known and suspected fingerprint trackers, and another feature called Resist Fingerprinting “limits the personal characteristics of a user’s operating system and hardware exposed to websites.” But its support page says this setting can break some websites.

Platforms: Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows

LibreWolf is a modified version of the open-source Firefox browser that hardens security and removes any whiff of “phoning home” that many browsers do, particularly those from big tech vendors like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. LibreWolf won’t win any design awards with its bare-bones interface, and it offers little in the way of browsing conveniences aside from the standard bookmarks, tabs, and history, but that’s not its point.

Librewolf comes with the excellent uBlock anti-tracking extension and uses the non-data-gathering DuckDuckGo as its default search engine. The browser gets excellent scores on the PrivacyTests.org open-source set of web browser privacy measurements, and the EFF’s Cover Your Tracks fingerprinting test reports “strong protection against web tracking.” So intent on not sending any data to servers is the browser that it turns off the Google Safe Browsing protection that’s active in standard Firefox.

Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows

Mullvad Browser uses Mozilla’s open-source Firefox code base. It’s a collaboration between the Mullvad VPN service and the Tor Project. It looks just like the Tor browser but doesn’t offer actual Tor functionality (unlike the Brave browser). Mullvad, however, does implement protections against AI-powered privacy threats with its DAITA (Defense against AI-guided Traffic Analysis) technology.

Mullvad has its own leak test, which is sort of self-serving since only browsers set to use Mullvad’s DNS servers pass it. The browser comes with the excellent uBlock Origin ad- and tracker-blocking extension. And the default search provider is DuckDuckGo, which is better for privacy than Google or Bing. The Mullvad browser pushes you toward signing up for the company’s Mullvad VPN service, but at least that’s among our Editors’ Choice winners for VPNs. The browser does very well on both the PrivacyTests.org suite and on EFF’s Cover Your Tracks test, which shows that it blocks ads and invisible trackers and has a non-unique fingerprint.

Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows

The Tor (it stands for the onion router) browser’s slogan is, “Protect yourself against tracking, surveillance, and censorship.” It provides a multistep encrypted route for your browsing that makes identifying you very difficult. It offers even more privacy than a VPN because your encrypted traffic goes through at least three nodes. The first node knows the source but not the destination of the traffic, the middle ones know neither, and the last knows only the destination. This system makes it nearly impossible to trace traffic back to you. Tor also lets you access sites that use its onion protocol on the dark web.

The downsides? It slows down your browsing, and some sites don’t play well with it. For instance, if you crank up Tor to its safest level of protection and disable JavaScript, a lot of common sites won’t run—basically anything that features interactive content, such as YouTube.

The EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool reports “strong protection against web tracking” but that “your browser has a non-unique fingerprint.” It also reported the lowest amount of identifying data of any browser I tested, under 10 bits. Tor came in fourth on the PrivacyTests.org browser tests, with 132 passes behind Brave (143), Mullvad (141), and LibreWolf (139).

An even more private way to run Tor is through Tails, a lightweight operating system based on Ubuntu that you run off a USB drive. Tails doesn’t save any unencrypted data from your browsing session and leaves no traces on your computer’s drive.

Platforms: Android, Linux, macOS, Windows

Waterfox is based on the same Gecko web rendering engine that powers Firefox. The organization behind Waterfox recently became independent of its corporate owner, so it’s now an open-source project. The browser’s docs include a clear, reassuring privacy policy, and it uses the same Enhanced Tracking Protection as Firefox. The browser site claims that “unless you specifically register for a web service with us, we do not want or touch your personal data.” The tracking protection in Waterfox is identical to that in Firefox, which claims to protect against cross-site tracking cookies, cryptominers, fingerprinters, social media trackers, and trackers hidden in ads, videos, and other content. For more privacy, you can turn off WebRTC.

Like Firefox, Waterfox lets you sync add-ons, bookmarks, history, passwords, settings, and tabs. The browser uses Oblivious DNS, which obscures your website requests from your ISP, a boon to privacy. You can also use any extensions and themes designed for Firefox. The EFF’s Cover Your Tracks test reports strong protection against tracking with Waterfox’s default privacy setting. The test, however, reports a unique fingerprint despite the browser’s claim of fingerprint protection. Like with most of the browsers here, that feature uses only a block list rather than actually randomizing fingerprint data like Brave. It currently defaults to Bing for web searches for financial support, but you can, of course, change your search provider to something more privacy-focused like DuckDuckGo, and the Waterfox developers are working on a first-party private search option.

Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows