Brave browser hits 126 million active users as its search engine surges past 2.5 billion monthly queries

It looks like a sizeable chunk of users have been switching browsers, and a lot of them are landing on Brave. But it’s not just people trying out the browser and moving on. Brave’s latest data suggests that the browser has hit a new high in monthly active users, with it clocking 126.25 million MAUs in August.

This isn’t coming out of nowhere. Back in July, Brave hit 51 million daily active users, despite the dip in overall traffic during the summer.

Like last time, the new details were shared by co-founder Brendan Eich in a post on X.

As noted in the post, the DAUs peaked at 53 million last month, with a whopping 6.78 billion minutes of daily use. So it’s clear that Brave’s growth isn’t stagnating.

A good chunk of this current wave started earlier in the summer when a World Cup boost gave Brave a sudden lift, but surprisingly, those users actually stuck around instead of disappearing after the tournament wrapped up.

But it’s not just Brave browser that’s seeing a boost. Brave claims that its search engine also passed 2.51 billion queries for the month, setting an all-time high of over 85.5 million queries on August 31 alone. It’s still only a fraction of Google Search’s numbers, but it shows the team is on the right track.

Another key point shared is that roughly 8% of those searches came from users on rival browsers like Chrome and Safari. This shows that people aren’t just using Brave Search because it’s the default search engine in their browser. People have been actively looking for Google alternatives ever since the company started rolling out its aggressive AI search overhauls.

Eich also made it clear that Brave keeps the lights on using “search ads + API, browser ads, premium products, [and] crypto deals,” instead of monetizing personal data.

Meanwhile, privacy isn’t the only thing going for Brave. A recent test from the team revealed that the browser is faster than Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. This could be yet another reason for more people to switch over. 

We’ll just have to wait and see if this trend continues when the next set of data comes out.

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