Brave vs Helium in 2026

Brave and Helium answer the same request, Chrome without Google's tracking, in opposite ways. Both are Chromium browsers that block ads and trackers from the first launch, and both score 5 for extensions, because the Chrome Web Store works in both. Brave then adds a whole set of products of its own. Helium adds almost nothing and says so on purpose.

What Brave adds

Brave's Shields block ads, trackers, fingerprinting and cookie banners, and strip targeted ads from YouTube. Around that, Brave builds a lot: private windows that route through Tor, built-in containers, a paid VPN, Brave Search, the Leo AI assistant, a crypto wallet and the opt-in Rewards scheme. That breadth is why Brave scores 5 for privacy against Helium's 4, and 4 for AI features against Helium's 1. Brave also syncs across all five major platforms, with apps for iPhone and Android, and has a funded company and more than 130 million monthly users behind it.

The cost is clutter. Much of what Brave adds is optional, but the menus are full of it, and Brave scores 3 for ease of use. Brave seems to know this: in June 2026 it began selling Brave Origin, a one-time $59.99 version with the AI, Rewards, wallet and VPN removed. Brave's source code is also only partly open.

What Helium leaves out

Helium is built on Ungoogled Chromium by imput, the two-person team behind the cobalt downloader. It ships uBlock Origin, the full Manifest V2 version, with community filter lists, so ads, trackers, cookie banners and third-party cookies are blocked from the start. It makes no background requests on first launch and sends Chrome Web Store installs through its own servers so Google cannot link them to you. There is no AI and no crypto, and the project says it does not want either. Helium is fully open source and scores 5 for speed against Brave's 4, which shows how little sits on top of Chromium.

What it leaves out also includes conveniences. Helium has no built-in password manager, so you use an extension like Bitwarden. It has no sync yet, though a private sync vault is in development. It has no page translation, and it runs only on Mac, Windows and Linux, still labelled beta. Brave has all of these. Helium scores 3 for both ease of use and customizability, against Brave's 3 and 4.

Brave keeps full uBlock Origin working too, by hosting its own copy since Google removed Manifest V2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store. So on blocking power they are close; the difference is everything else.

Which should you choose?

Choose Brave if you want privacy on every device including your phone, with sync, a password manager, Tor windows and a company with the resources to keep going. Turn off what you don't use, or pay once for Brave Origin.

Choose Helium if you browse on a computer and want the leanest privacy-focused Chromium there is: fully open source, very fast, with no AI, no crypto and nothing to sell. Bring your own password manager, and keep in mind that it is still a small beta project.