# Best private browsers compared: Firefox, Brave and more | Proton **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/best-private-browsers-compared-firefox-brave-and-more-proton/41630 **Category:** General **Tags:** article, software, website **Created:** 2026-10-20T19:33:07Z **Posts:** 25 ## Post 1 by @Gabriela — 2026-10-20T19:33:07Z > **[Best private browsers compared: Firefox, Brave and more | Proton](https://proton.me/blog/best-private-browsers)** > > Compare Firefox, LibreWolf, Brave, Vivaldi, and Zen for privacy, fingerprinting protection, Google independence, and everyday usability. It seems to me that LibreWolf was marked down somewhat arbitrarily, to justify choosing Chromium for their future browser. What do you guys think? --- ## Post 2 by @Cyber-Typhoon — 2026-10-20T20:11:10Z A 5 out of 10 for usability? Can’t even imagine what would be Mullvad and Tor browsers then. > LibreWolf: 5/10. Its defaults can clear browsing data when you close the browser, which may mean logging into websites again. You can adjust some settings, but doing so involves trade-offs. The justification is absolutely bull crap. Librewolf meets the balance imho. --- ## Post 3 by @botany904 — 2026-10-20T20:42:46Z I personally think it’s more or less fair. Not exactly how I would’ve graded it but also not too bad. If their goal would’ve been to grade Firefox based browsers badly they could’ve done so by including very specific categories where Firefox would score bad like some specific security areas. Brave having 23/30 and Librewolf 22/30 is extremely close and if they really wanted to rig everything they would have given Librewolf way less I assume. --- ## Post 4 by @Menkork — 2026-10-20T21:38:00Z You know, this got me thinking. Since it’s already trending and everyone is doing it, and it’s been a while since PG really refreshed its browser discussions. I’d actually love to see Nate do his own browser tier list video. And considering how reasonable and levelheaded people already are in the YouTube comments, and whenever browser preferences come up, I’m sure the comments section would be extra lovely this time around, a real welcoming environment where everyone respects opinions. :slightly_smiling_face: But seriously, I would love to see a video on that. --- ## Post 5 by @dngriffith — 2026-10-20T22:18:05Z I think it is fair. From an average user perspective, LibreWolf is unusable on a daily basis. I say this because I was once an “ordinary user” and I didn’t like/know how to deal with the little friction there is when using LibreWolf. Even using Firefox + arkenfox seemed like a nightmare. Brave, on the other hand, is super simple: you just need to push buttons. That said, 10/10 for fingerprinting protection is too much for Brave! It is good, but not perfect. --- ## Post 6 by @trilobyte — 2026-10-20T22:31:35Z Can you be specific? When did you use librewolf? I tried it recently and don’t find it harder than brave. I do nothing in librewolf beyond pressing buttons. In fact, sometimes something won’t load in brave and it will work in librewolf. At least, I find librewolf no harder than default firefox, where a webpage will occasionally refuse to allow you to proceed purely because you have firefox. I still prefer brave for the chromium compatibility and security, but librewolf seems far from unusable to me. --- ## Post 7 by @Cyber-Typhoon — 2026-10-20T22:47:38Z I don’t think that’s fair, although I acknowledge that usability is subjective. My rational: 1. If the friction can be reduced through settings, that shouldn’t automatically cut the usability score in half. 2. If the primary goal is privacy, and a setting improves privacy, why penalize the browser for it? Again assuming that usability can be managed on settings. Privacy Guides [recommends](https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/#privacy-security) implementing exactly this kind of friction in Firefox and we can easily work around it: > Sanitize on Close > If you want to stay logged in to particular sites, you can allow exceptions in Cookies and Site Data → Manage Exceptions… > Check Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed > This protects you from persistent cookies, but does not protect you against cookies acquired during any one browsing session. When this is enabled, it becomes possible to easily cleanse your browser cookies by simply restarting Firefox. **You can set exceptions on a per-site basis, if you wish to stay logged in to a particular site you visit often.** I’m also curious how the upcoming Proton Browser will be evaluated. Will it be penalized for usability in the same way or they will be not privacy enough on that keeping our cookies exposed all the time? I’d rate Mullvad around 5, Tor around 2, and LibreWolf around 7–8 for usability. LibreWolf is quite configurable, especially when evaluated in the context of a privacy-focused browser. **We should evaluate it against the expectations of privacy, right?** Personally, I didn’t have to fight that much with Librewolf, I use it as my privacy browser. My logging browser remains Brave Origin. The point that they make about YT I don’t have issues because I use Freetube. --- ## Post 8 by @dngriffith — 2026-10-20T22:50:12Z > [@trilobyte](#): > > but librewolf seems far from unusable to me. Yes, LibreWolf may be easy for you to use, but many people find anything other than Google Chrome difficult, especially Firefox. Imagine how intimidating a hardened version of Firefox must be for the average user. Maybe you don’t realize that because you’re too focused on your own experience. But companies like Proton work with people every day and try to make their products as intuitive as possible for everyone. I also work at a company where I provide direct support to people on a daily basis, and most of them don’t know even the basics of technology. That’s how most people see technology: as something that should make life easier and feel intuitive, not something that adds friction. So I’ll say it again: anything that ins’t chrome is very difficult for the average user to use. Brave comes much closer to the Chrome experience than the other browsers on the list, while LibreWolf is much farther from it. --- ## Post 9 by @trilobyte — 2026-10-20T22:53:10Z I just fail to see how this is possible for any reason other than familiarity. I certainly experience “friction” in some other areas (eg, vaultwarden or password manager exports, linux versus macos, etc), but I don’t find myself doing anything more complicated in firefox. I can’t see why it would be harder than chrome was when they first learned chrome. Of course, learning a new skill takes effort, but it doesn’t mean firefox is inherently more friction inclined or difficult. Edit: To put this another way, there are some non-technically inclined people who have been using firefox for the past 10-15 years. I don’t think they would find chrome intuitive or easy. The reason is solely because chrome isn’t firefox. --- ## Post 10 by @dngriffith — 2026-10-20T23:12:55Z First, we need to ask what usability means for Proton’s customers. I think it means ease of use, less friction, and products that simply work. When I first used LibreWolf, some local websites didn’t work properly. Other seemed to break because of canvas restrictions. I also wanted to keep cookies, but I didn’t understand why I kept getting signed out of a website when the same site worked in Chrome and Firefox. People sometimes come to me for help with things like making a Google Meet presentation full-screen, printing a web page, figuring out why they aren’t receiving new emails when their Gmail storage is full, or simply taking a screenshot. Do you think people who need that kind of help would want to troubleshoot browser-specific problems too? Most users don’t even change their browser’s default settings, not even in Chrome. They’re unlikely to explore the settings menu to opt in or out of features, adjust privacy controls, or change, or change the browser’s behavior. A hardened browser can introduce extra hurdles: websites may behave differently when tracking protection blocks scripts or cookies, sign-ins, embedded videos or online forms may not work as expected, and users may have to figure out which protection setting to adjust or whether changing it is safe. We should first decide who we mean when we talk about “usability”. A browser that feels intuitive to a technically confident user may feel confusing or frustrating to someone who just wants to get their work done. --- ## Post 11 by @any1 — 2026-10-20T23:18:13Z > **Winner: Brave** , at 10/10. Its fingerprint randomization makes it the strongest performer in this comparison. Still, fingerprinting protection doesn’t guarantee anonymity, and results depend on the browser version and test conditions. Its actually insane to rank Brave’s protections above RFP. You can compare it to Firefox’s FPP protections, since they also aim for a similar goal, but RFP is an entirely different class. > **LibreWolf: 5/10**. Its defaults can clear browsing data when you close the browser, which may mean logging into websites again. You can adjust some settings, but doing so involves trade-offs. I can understand the first point, but not sure what they mean with changing the settings involves trade-offs, when it would then behave exactly the same as Firefox does. You can toggle 3 checkboxes and you basically have no breakage anymore (RFP, Sanitizing on shutdown and WebGL). I plan on having onboarding in the future, which will explain and let the user decide how much “breakage” they want to deal with. --- ## Post 12 by @trilobyte — 2026-10-20T23:20:41Z TBH this is obvious AI generated article, so we probably shouldn’t be taking these specific ratings or claims seriously. It’s disappointing proton is posting AI articles now. Not sure if it’s 100% AI or if it was human edited after, but it reads like an AI wrote its base for sure. --- ## Post 13 by @any1 — 2026-10-21T00:30:45Z Also weird how Tor Browser was not mentioned at all, since it deserves at least a mention for high risk users. --- ## Post 14 by @ZenByte — 2026-10-21T01:43:41Z Mullvad and Safari weren’t mentioned either --- ## Post 15 by @trilobyte — 2026-10-21T03:06:39Z > [@dngriffith](#): > > When I first used LibreWolf, some local websites didn’t work properly. Other seemed to break because of canvas restrictions. I also wanted to keep cookies, but I didn’t understand why I kept getting signed out of a website when the same site worked in Chrome and Firefox. Even though this wasn’t a response to me specifically, I should say canvass fingerprinting issues qualifies as an example of what I asked for. It seems like this can interfere with file uploads sometimes, which has happened to me on firefox too. I would agree that librewolf might not be the best choice if a technically incompetent person wants to use one browser only. In fact, they should go chromium based since some websites don’t accept firefox. On the other hand, if they care about privacy, librewolf has really good defaults they can benefit from without understanding them, like cookies being deleted upon exit. “You might need a second browser sometimes and not understand the point of the defaults at first” I would say is far from unusable. That doesn’t mean I’m saying it’s easy, as web browsers can get pretty complex in general. --- ## Post 16 by @eteszi — 2026-10-21T08:21:11Z > The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Cover Your Tracks tool lets you test how your browser appears to trackers. It’s a useful starting point, although no single test captures every fingerprinting technique. You can stop reading the article here. EFF tool is garbage; [its results depend on whether the user has the right list enabled in their ad blocker](https://github.com/easylist/easylist/pull/22455). Ah, no wonder—the article’s [author is a marketing and branding consultant](https://hk.linkedin.com/in/marcustsui), not a cybersecurity researcher or anything like that. --- ## Post 17 by @Menkork — 2026-10-21T15:17:04Z I think you’re raising a fair criticism, but it’s worth separating between the different functions of CYT. The GitHub discussion concerns how the tool looks at tracker blocking with filter list based blockers. That’s a known limitation, and EFF documents it in its methodology. But overall the article is talking fingerprinting, which it evaluates separately. I wouldn’t say that necessarily invalidates those measurements. Brave’s lead privacy engineer even spoke on this as well. Now I think Satan would be throwing snowballs before I would treat it as a definitive privacy benchmark, but describing it as a useful starting point, while calling out said limitations, seems reasonable to me. --- ## Post 18 by @nateb — 2026-10-23T16:46:37Z F-tier for all of them because they all connect you to the internet, which is a horrible place. Disconnect, throw your devices away, live in nature as intended. /s --- ## Post 19 by @Linus_Sex_Tips — 2026-10-23T19:05:12Z You guys are all putting way too much stock into a Proton slopticle. They just crank this stuff out for SEO, purge it from your mind --- ## Post 20 by @Lukas — 2026-10-23T19:51:19Z Brave by far the best option. Librewolf is a good option if you refuse to use Chromium. Everything else on that list is not even worth considering. --- ## Post 21 by @Lukas — 2026-10-23T19:53:40Z Can’t wait for the next slopticle shilling /e/OS or some other garbage. --- ## Post 23 by @Gopher — 2026-11-02T09:31:05Z I get Mullvad is a direct competitor in the privacy centric VPN space, but I’m instantly going to write off any privacy browser list that excludes them. --- ## Post 24 by @Aflame-Blighted — 2026-11-02T14:00:29Z Another lazy article where it turns out that everybody wins! Oprah style.. Do a proper comparison, make a statement, stand by your decision. Instead, they gave them all lollipops for (unknowingly) participating. --- ## Post 25 by @opensource.akida — 2026-11-03T07:42:00Z I am going to stick with Firefox on iPhone. It has worked well so far and I don’t see the need to change. Happy to be shown otherwise though.