Evaluating Brave VPN

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I will talk about Nightly and what is being developed for the future of VPN.

First, they are making changes to the VPN to use WireGuard instead of inbuilt OS APIs for the VPN, that will allow better VPN, and be able to use even without Brave being opened.

In Nightly they are installing also a Service, and today for example they merged a PR to allow the Service to stay connected when you restart the computer. That shows you it won’t depend on Brave Browser completely.

The problem with using OS APIs was that it was not good, Windows doesn’t do it well, so using WireGuard will allow better integration and cross platform, etc etc. Mobile already uses WireGuard for it, so it only makes sense to use that as well.

So all these will make the VPN better, but only when they land, you could test it on Nightly, but not many are going to do that.
Also I doubt people know you can use the VPN outside Brave, they think it is like Opera (proxy) and done.

The problem with Brave’s VPN is the pricing.

Block trackers on every app, on every device, even outside the browser. One VPN subscription protects 5 devices across desktop, Android, and iOS. Traveling? On public Wi-Fi? Don’t trust your ISP? It’s time for Brave Firewall + VPN.

The question is also, do 5 devices for $10 is good enough compared to other VPN services?

Some people don’t care about companies, they just want the cheaper deal:

  • NordVPN for example is a 6 devices deal, and they also include password manager and cloud storage and all that for like $5 a month.

  • ExpressVPN 8 devices for $8 a year.

  • ProtoVPN even has the ultimate bundle for $10, which includes password manager, drive, mail and all that with 10 devices. So that’s like the best deal even if I don’t trust Proto, they are the fishiest company, but it’s cheap and has tons of features.

So I guess that’s the problem with Brave, the pricing, of course, unless you want to help Brave company grow financially 5 devices is not enough.

And then saying how the VPN is still WIP which might give a bad impression especially on Windows, until WireGuard gets to the stable point where it will be turned on by default. (brave://flags/#brave-vpn-wireguard has to be enabled to be used)

If they had like a bundle with Brave talk, Search Premium and VPN for the $10, it would be fine, but not yet.

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