Platform: Brave 1.77.0 on Windows 10 Home x64 22H2
Microsoft’s Edge-C includes a VPN aka Secure Network. It is configured, by default, to omit video content to reduce VPN bandwidth consumption. 5GB/mo quota is free, but a higher quota is not free. Brave’s VPN is subscriptionware from the start hence never free other than perhaps a trial period. There is no free basic or capped VPN tier with Brave. The VPN button in Brave’s address toolbar merely offers a trial subscription after which the user must pay for Brave’s VPN. I rarely need a VPN, so a 5 GB/month quota with Edge is far more than I need, and I don’t care if videos are not VPN’ed.
Startpage allows using their VPN proxy aka Anonymous View to visit sites for entries in their search results, and it is also free. Brave Search has no proxy/VPN for its search results, and no free VPN service tier.
Perhaps using the Tor function within Brave (New private window with TOR) would work to provide equal anonymity at an unknown site; however, VPN routing is usually [much] faster than TOR routing. Tor is not suitable for streaming content or high-volume traffic, but I don’t need videos to get Tor’ed, but with Brave I don’t have a choice. It’s Tor or not to Tor; i.e., it’s all Tor’ed.
Typically, for me, streamed content does not involve privacy or security issues, so Startpage’s VPN in its search results that omits streaming content in their VPN is satisfactory most times, and similarly for Microsoft’s VPN option in Edge.
Brave could use their free VPN tier as a lure. Users that have higher bandwidth requirements, like streaming videos or web pages with lots of videos, could opt to pay for an uncapped VPN service tier. A trial period is of no interest to me. I’m not spending time experimenting, learning, and troubleshooting how to use a VPN trial only to have it yanked away at some point.
I can use a capped VPN in Edge. I can use an anonymizing proxy with Startpage search results. With Brave, I can trial, and then pay, or not bother and stick with the free limited solutions already mentioned.