Summary
- Brave Origin is a premium browser that delivers a less cluttered experience than the “regular” Brave browser.
- Brave Origin costs $59.99, and you only need one license to use across platforms.
- Linux users can use Brave Origin for free.
On June 4, Brave announced the stable release of Brave Origin — a premium browser designed to provide a streamlined experience.
I opened the same 10 tabs in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Brave — this one uses the least
All browsers consume memory, but which one consumes the least?
What is Brave Origin?
Back to basics
Users originally flocked to Brave (which we’re big fans of) for its private browsing experience, but features like Rewards, AI tools, and a built-in VPN have gradually weighed it down. In response, Brave announced Brave Origin, a stripped-back browser without all of these extras.
Origin ships without the following features:
- Email aliases
- Leo AI
- News
- Playlist
- Rewards
- Speedreader
- Stats
- Talk
- Tor
- VPN
- Wallet
- Wayback Machine
- Web Discovery Project
There are two versions of Brave Origin available: a standalone browser that functions as a separate product, and an upgrade for the regular Brave browser that adds toggles for the various features. A single purchase gives you access to both options. This is a flexible approach, if a little confusing.
Brave Origin is not free
The times, they are a-changin’
You might notice I said “purchase” in the last paragraph. Yup — on most platforms, Brave Origin is a paid product, with a price tag of $59.99. On the one hand, this makes sense: many of the features being deactivated are money-makers for Brave, so the company needs to make that lost revenue up somehow. On the other hand, I can’t say I’ve ever considered paying for a browser before.
Linux is also an outlier here — Origin is free for users on the open-source platform. Brave claims distros are already customizing Brave to remove many of these same features, so keeping it free allows it to provide a consistent user experience.
You can already disable a lot of these features without paying
It’s worth noting that you can already hide many of the features that Brave Origin disables. However, hiding them does not remove the underlying code, so you’re effectively slapping a band-aid on the problem rather than solving it. That’s why many users are looking for alternatives to Brave (Helium is an excellent option). Now, you may not have to.
Surprisingly positive reception
Online discourse is rarely this calm
Opinions on Brave Origin are surprisingly positive. Users generally seem happy with the product itself — the best parts of Brave without all the extra fluff. I was fully expecting this product to be almost universally panned, but most opinions are pretty balanced:
What do you think? Would you pay to remove features from a browser? Drop us a comment and let us know!
