Brave vs Chrome: uBlock Origin, Manifest V2, RAM and Privacy Compared

Onyimadu compared five Chromium browsers: Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera and Brave. His pick was Brave, which has replaced Chrome on all of his devices. He doesn't give Brave an unqualified win, though, and the caveats are as useful as the verdict.

Same engine, five different trade-offs​

All five browsers run on Chromium, so the differences come from what each vendor adds or removes. Here is the feature snapshot Onyimadu reported for the versions he used. These are his observations for his own setup, not a formal feature audit:

He gave each rival credit where it earned it:

• Vivaldi has the richest layout and tab controls of the five.
• Edge runs tracking prevention quietly in the background.
• Opera's sidebar is handy if you use it. He mostly doesn't.
• Chrome works smoothly with most of his accounts.

He also says plainly that Brave doesn't win just because it has a built-in blocker, since Vivaldi and Opera have one too. What sets Brave apart is that it still officially supports the original uBlock Origin.

Section summary: The engine is shared, so the real differences are in blocking, extension policy and extras. On extensions in particular, the gap between these browsers has grown a lot this year.

Why uBlock Origin is suddenly the dividing line​

Google's Chrome Enterprise and Education release notes set the date: on August 31, 2026, Chrome finished its move to Manifest V3 by removing all remaining Manifest V2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store. After that date, users and administrators can't update or reinstall MV2 extensions from the store. Google also notes that MV2 extensions already installed on Chrome 138 or older stay enabled but no longer get updates, and that Chrome 139 and newer only support Manifest V3.

Brave chose a different path. In a post on X after the removal, the company said "We host uBO and other MV2 extensions on our servers so you can use them despite their removal from the Chrome Web Store." A Brave community forum thread says the browser currently "hosts" 4 Manifest V2 extensions. Brave's own materials list them as uBlock Origin, AdGuard, NoScript and uMatrix.

Edge is the browser Windows users should watch most closely. Microsoft's Edge developer documentation lays out a phased schedule:

1. July 2022: Partner Center stopped accepting new MV2 extensions.
2. August 2026: MV2 deprecation warnings started appearing for developers in Partner Center.
3. Mid-September 2026: Warnings were scheduled to start showing for some users on Edge's Manage extensions page and on the Edge Add-ons site.
4. Early 2027: Microsoft expects MV2 deprecation for enterprise customers to begin.
5. Date not set: Partner Center will stop accepting updates to extensions that still use MV2.

So Edge isn't where Chrome is yet. The change is underway, but consumer warnings and the enterprise cutoff are separate milestones. IT admins who rely on MV2 extensions in managed Edge fleets should treat early 2027 as their planning deadline. It isn't a reason to panic this month.

Section summary: Chrome has finished its MV2 removal, Edge is partway through, and Brave is hosting a short list of MV2 extensions itself. That last point is the main thing separating Brave from the others in this comparison.

uBlock Origin Lite is a different tool, not a smaller copy​

Chrome and Edge users get uBlock Origin Lite (uBOL), the Manifest V3 version. Onyimadu says it isn't a like-for-like replacement for the original, and the project agrees. The uBOL FAQ, maintained by uBlock Origin creator Raymond Hill, says uBOL is too different from uBO to be an automatic replacement. Whether you notice a difference depends on which sites you visit and how both extensions are configured.

In Onyimadu's testing, uBOL on Vivaldi still let some ads through, even with Vivaldi's own blocker running too. Chrome and Edge behaved similarly. On The Guardian:

• Brave with default Shields removed the top banner and the banners that show up as you scroll.
• Chrome and Edge with uBOL set to "Optimal" removed most banners, but the top banner stayed.
• Vivaldi and Opera still showed some banners.

Treat that as one site tested by one person. The report doesn't give repeat runs, filter-list settings or test conditions, so it can't stand in for a controlled benchmark. Two details from uBOL's own documentation also matter when reading the results:

• Optimal mode skips generic cosmetic filtering. The FAQ says uBOL doesn't apply generic cosmetic filtering by default, while the original uBO does. To get it, you have to raise the filtering mode to Complete. A lingering banner in Optimal mode may be partly a configuration issue rather than a hard MV3 limit.
• Running two blockers together can backfire. The FAQ advises against using uBOL alongside another content blocker. Pairing it with Vivaldi's built-in blocker may have muddied that result.

The FAQ is also clear that some limits are real. Per-site dynamic filtering, some regex-based filters and response-body modification can't be fully expressed through MV3's declarativeNetRequest API. As a result, uBOL is generally less effective against anti-adblock scripts and at avoiding site breakage. It has upsides too: because it is fully declarative, the FAQ says it filters reliably from the moment the browser launches, which MV2 blockers on Chromium don't always manage.

Practical tip for Chrome and Edge users staying put: If ads slip through with uBOL, switch that site to Complete mode before giving up. Turn off any other content blockers while you troubleshoot.

Fingerprinting: Brave's quieter advantage​

Onyimadu also ran all five browsers through the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cover Your Tracks tool. Brave was the only one that consistently showed a randomized fingerprint, which helps against tracking that depends on a stable browser fingerprint.

A randomized fingerprint doesn't make you anonymous. It defeats one tracking technique, not cookies, logins or network-level identifiers, and the report doesn't give test settings or repeat counts. Still, randomization by default is a real difference from the other four, which mostly lean on blocklists.

The RAM numbers: Chrome nearly doubled Brave​

In a separate test he'd documented earlier, Onyimadu opened 25 identical tabs in clean Brave and Chrome profiles with no extensions. Note that these versions differ from the ones in the feature table above:

Private working set is the physical RAM in use. Commit charge is the virtual memory the system has committed or reserved. In that run, Brave used about 45% less physical memory, and the commit-charge gap was smaller but pointed the same way.

Onyimadu admits the numbers don't explain the cause. Different features, background processes, caching and tab management could all play a part. The report also doesn't name the test machine, Windows build, tab URLs or measurement method, so this is one documented run, not a performance ranking. On a 32 GB workstation you may never notice. On an 8 GB laptop, a gap of 3.6 GB or so in private working set could be the difference between smooth tab switching and stuttering.

Quick fix either way: Turn on Memory Saver. In Chrome it's under Settings > Performance. In Brave, Onyimadu found it under Settings > System. How much memory you get back depends on your workload.

How to enable original uBlock Origin in Brave​

If you're switching for uBO, use Brave's built-in route:

1. Open Brave and type brave://settings/extensions/v2 in the address bar. You can also go to Settings > Extensions > Manifest V2 extensions.
2. Turn on uBlock Origin. You can also turn on any of the other hosted MV2 extensions here.
3. Check brave://extensions to confirm it installed and is labelled as Brave-hosted.

Avoid sideloading uBO from a ZIP or CRX file. A uBlock Origin volunteer on the project's GitHub discussions advised: "Do not install from external sources for Brave, use Brave's own "Settings > Extensions > Manifest V2 extensions > enable uBlock Origin"." One Brave community user found a leftover non-hosted copy installed alongside the hosted one. The advice there was to check to see if perhaps there's a conflicting NOT-"Brave-hosted" version installed.

For admins: In a Brave community thread, a user asked how to force-install the Brave-hosted uBO on fresh installs through MDM. The reply was that, to the respondent's knowledge, there was no group policy or enterprise method for changing specific content filters, so they suggested turning uBO on manually. That's a community answer rather than official documentation. If you need managed uBO in Brave, test your deployment before rolling it out.

The catches: clutter and trust​

Onyimadu's praise comes with real reservations:

• Bundled extras. Within about five minutes of setup, he had turned off Rewards, Leo, Brave News and the VPN prompts. Some people will want those features. He found them clutter.
• Aggressive Shields. Shields sometimes broke pages, and he learned to switch it off for specific sites.
• Trust. His biggest concern is Brave's history of adding affiliate codes to some cryptocurrency-related URLs typed into the address bar. He says that's not what he'd expect from a privacy-focused browser. He raises it as past behavior, and it's fair to weigh, but it isn't evidence of anything happening now.

Brave's MV2 support also depends on Brave's own commitment. Third-party coverage of the hosted extensions describes the support as best-effort, which means the company could change it later.

The bottom line​

Whether Brave "seriously beats Chrome" depends on what you need. If you depend on Chrome's sync and Google account integration, Chrome is still the low-friction choice. Vivaldi has better tab management. Edge's tracking prevention needs no setup. Opera even lists the original uBlock Origin in its add-on store, according to Onyimadu's table.

If your priorities are full-strength content blocking, resistance to fingerprinting and lower memory use on modest hardware, his evidence points to Brave, as long as you're willing to spend five minutes switching off extras and decide for yourself how much you trust the company. And if you're staying on Chrome or Edge with uBO Lite, try Complete mode before deciding MV3 blocking isn't good enough. For Edge-managed fleets, the date to plan around is early 2027.