Brave Origin enters Nightly testing with a $59.99 price tag — but there's a catch

Brave Origin, a minimalist version of the Brave browser, is now available for Nightly testing. The information comes from an official post that Brave made on Reddit.

The company has clarified that Brave itself will remain a free browser, but this trimmed-down version costs $59.99 for a lifetime membership. That sounds alright, until you realize that the membership is only valid for 10 activations. Every time you reinstall the browser, one activation code gets used up. Until this is fixed, users may burn through activations faster than expected when reinstalling the browser or moving between devices.

Brave has not added a self-serve activation management option yet, though users can ask Brave Support to manually revoke used keys. The browser is still under testing, and feedback on issues like this will probably help. One comment on Reddit also claims that Brave is working on a long-term solution to this, but no screenshot or further information was shared.

Reception to this new browser was mixed, with some people opining that disabling AI or crypto is a fairly short process, making this whole “different browser” pointless. The activation limit was also called a “Money grab.”

Moreover, there are some complaints that Brave Origin also serves you ads for Brave Search, even if you’ve chosen a different search engine. Brave directly addressed these complaints in the Reddit announcement post and said they’re treating these issues as high-priority.

Finally, here’s a summary of the official announcement post:

1. Brave Origin is a paid version of Brave, which is minimal, with fewer features, but maintains privacy and the ad-blocker service. 
2. It’s for those who want to use Brave, but don’t like their VPN, Crypto Wallet, AI features, etc.
3. If you’re already using Brave, you can directly “upgrade” to Brave Origin instead of downloading it separately. The upgraded version will consist of options to enable or disable features, such as Speedreader.  Important Note: This will use up one activation.
4. It’s a one-time purchase of $59.99, but it’s completely free for Linux users.
5. The post mentions that Brave Origin is “slated” for the release channel, so it may take a bit of time before everyone gets it. (There are a few people mentioning it’s currently unavailable on iOS)

In other Brave news, the company is actively testing Containers for its desktop browser. We covered that here.

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