In a controlled session, Brave was running with only three open tabs—two of which were completely blank (e.g., about:blank), and the third loading a very lightweight static site consuming only 103 MB of network resources. Despite this minimal activity, system monitoring tools revealed that Brave was using over 3.5 GB of RAM.
And Virtual Memory 32.1+ GB Used By Brave --type=etc
This level of consumption, without extensions enabled or any complex JavaScript running in the background, is not only inefficient—it’s excessive.
This pattern of aggressive memory allocation raises important questions about Brave’s architecture, particularly its process isolation and Chromium-based tab handling. While process sandboxing and security isolation are valid design choices, they shouldn’t come at the cost of such bloated baseline memory usage. For a browser that markets itself on performance and efficiency, this kind of overhead for nearly idle use is unacceptable.
What’s more troubling is that this memory behavior seems reproducible across systems and sessions. For developers working with limited RAM or users on older machines, this undermines the supposed “lightweight” advantage that Brave claims to offer over Chrome.
Browsers must evolve to be smarter with resource allocation—especially when idle or handling simple content. If Brave wants to retain its standing among privacy-conscious and performance-focused users, addressing its memory footprint should be a top priority. Optimization at the tab and renderer level, better management of background processes, and transparent resource reporting are essential moving forward.
Until then, Brave’s RAM usage feels less like a feature of modern security and more like an oversight of responsible resource design.
In older versions of Brave, this issue never occurred. But after updating to the latest version (Brave Browser 138.1.80.115), high RAM usage and frequent lag have become common. Even with only three tabs open—two completely blank and one loading a small 103 MB page—Brave consumes over 3.5 GB of RAM. This wasn’t the case before. The browser now feels heavier and less optimized, especially for users with limited system resources. Something in the recent updates clearly introduced performance issues that need serious attention. Brave should prioritize fixing this to maintain its reputation for speed and efficiency.