Both Arc and Brave are relatively new web browsers that aim to provide a fast, private, and customizable browsing experience. Arc launched in April 2022 and is developed by The Browser Company, while Brave launched in 2016 and is led by JavaScript creator Brendan Eich.
In this comprehensive comparison guide, we’ll analyze the key features, performance, privacy protections, customizability, and overall usability of both browsers to help you decide which one better suits your needs.
Speed and Performance
Speed and responsiveness are critical for delivering a great browsing experience. Both Arc and Brave utilize the open source Chromium engine for rendering web pages, so core performance should be similar. However, other optimizations can impact perceived speed.
Page Load Times
In independent testing, Arc matched or beat Brave’s page load times on both desktop and mobile platforms over cellular and Wi-Fi connections. For example, Arc loaded nytimes.com fully 1.2 seconds faster than Brave on mobile. These fractional speed gains can add up over hundreds of page views.
Memory and CPU Usage
Brave tends to use slightly less RAM than Arc, likely owing to its longer development history and lower default tab count. However, Arc’s vertical tab interface can display over 50% more tabs in the same space. For CPU utilization, both browsers are quite efficient out of the box.
One area where Arc pulls ahead is its automatic tab suspension feature for inactive tabs, reducing their memory and CPU footprint until they are reactivated. This helps keep system resource usage lower with many open tabs.
Privacy and Security
Privacy has become a major point of differentiation between modern browsers. Both Brave and Arc incorporate state-of-the-art protections, but take somewhat divergent approaches.
Shields/Trackers/Ads
Brave pioneered an aggressive multi-layered shield model that blocks ads, cookies, fingerprinting, cryptocurrency miners, and other schemes by default via an abstraction called Brave Shields. Shields catches the vast majority of tracking attempts and nuisances.
Comparatively, Arc takes a simpler out-of-box approach focused squarely on blocking third-party ad trackers and cookies. For other protections, it offers extensions like uBlock Origin. This provides more flexibility for users to balance protection versus compatibility.
Tor/Onion Routing
Brave supports onion routing to access dark web Tor sites and services. Arc does not currently have built-in Tor support, relying instead on the third-party Tor Browser for strong anonymity.
Fingerprinting
Brave uses an aggressive script and font fingerprinting blocker to prevent websites from tracking users by their device profiles. Arc does not yet block fingerprinting out-of-the-box, so some isolated tracking is possible.
Overall, Brave provides more privacy protections enabled by default, while Arc offers leaner footprint that still blocks most ads and trackers.
Sidebar and Tab Management
Efficient sidebar navigation and tab handling represent major differences between Arc and Brave’s interface paradigms.
Tab Layout
Arc uses an innovative vertical tab strip along the left side of the browser window that economizes on space. This allows viewing 50+ tab titles at a glance without scrolling. Brave relies on a traditional horizontal row of tabs across the top of the screen, limiting legible tabs to around 10-15 in a typical window.
Tab Views
Relatedly, Arc introduces the concept of Spaces and Explores to manage tabs. Spaces let you group tabs into task-oriented workspaces that can be independently themed. Explores contain your full browsing history over time. Brave provides neither feature, displaying all tabs under one umbrella.
Tab Actions
Both browsers enable organizing tabs into folders. However, Arc makes many more tab operations accessible via right click menus compared to Brave. For example, Arc offers shortcuts to move, reopen, suspend, favorite, archive, mute, and duplicate tabs.
Searching Tabs
Arc provides robust indexed search across open and archived tabs via its command bar. Brave lacks an equivalent quick search mechanism, requiring linear scanning to locate specific tabs.
For tabs and task-focused browsing, Arc provides superior management capabilities thanks to its innovative vertical interface and metadata features.
Customization and Extensibility
The ability for users to tailor and tweak their browser’s design and functions weighs heavily for power users. Both browsers support themes and extensions, but Arc pushes customizability much further overall.
Visual Themes
Visually, Arc allows each Space to have its own color theme, supporting a level of per-tab customization Brave cannot match. The theming applies not just to the UI but elements like tabs and status bars.
Tab Layout
Beyond themes, entire sections of Arc’s UI can be revealed, hidden, resized, and snapped to edges via mouse interactions. For example, the vertical tab strip width adjusts by dragging while the command search bar hides or unhides with a click. These simple interactions enable user-defined tab layouts.
Extensions
Both browsers have access to the entire Chrome Web Store catalog of extensions to augment functionality. Brave edges out Arc slightly with its closer ties to Chromium allowing certain extensions deeper integration.
Boosts
Exclusive to Arc are Boosts – user scripts that enable performing advanced customizations to existing sites without technical expertise. Boosts modules like themes, layouts, removals, and redirections require no programming chops.
For those desiring control over their browser appearance and tools, Arc is easily the superior choice.
Productivity Features
Serious browser users demand tight integration with their workflows spanning notes, media, communication, and development tools.
Note Taking
Arc introduces native Easel note taking where rich text, images, links, and screenshots can be collected visually. Brave relies on external note tools. An even more powerful arc differentiator is bi-directional linking between Easels and tabs enabling unique context switching use cases.
Media Capture
Though Brave supports webpage screenshots, Arc makes capturing, editing, storing, and sharing images and parts of pages incredibly simple. Just click a camera icon without leaving the browser context.
Search
Arc search supports not just the web but also notes, tabs, bookmarks, downloads, and browsing history. Brave lacks equivalents to these articulated functions limiting discoverability compared to Arc.
Developer Tools
Brave and Arc both provide built-in access to Chrome developer tools for when editing or diagnosing site issues. However, Arc offers one click activation on its dev tools through convenient Command Bar access.
For getting things done online efficiently, Arc outclasses Brave significantly owing to its native productivity apps.
Architecture Overview
Under the hood, Brave and Arc share much common infrastructure, yet exhibit critical technical differences that impact functionality and adoption scenarios.
Rendering Engine
Both browsers utilize the open source Chromium engine (Blink) as their web page rendering foundation. This confers excellent support for web standards and peace-of-mind that the majority of sites function properly.
Chromium also enables Brave and Arc to automatically inherit bugs fixes and security patches from the upstream project. The browsers can contribute patches upstream as well.
Application Interface
Arc uses native macOS frameworks for its user interface, namely AppKit and SwiftUI. In contrast, Brave relies on Chromium’s cross-platform UI toolkit Electron for interface components. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach.
Leveraging native OS UI elements tends to provide better visual cohesion, animations, and leverage hardware acceleration in Arc. Electron can struggle to match native look and feel.
However, Arc’s AppKit reliance also creates platform lock-in on macOS. Brave’s duct tape-like Electron framework enables single codebase deployment across not just mobile and desktop operating systems but also architectures like ARM and x86.
Language Choice
Underlying the UI differences is Brave and Arc’s choice of implementation languages. Brave uses C++ in line with Chromium, while Arc adopted Apple’s Swift syntax.
Swift enjoys modern language attributes like type safety, concurrency, and memory management that facilitates faster and less crash-prone application development. However, C++ remains the lingua franca across operating system internals.
Release Cadence
Brave maintains a much faster release schedule than Arc, shipping multiple production versions per week at times. Its milestone-based workflow syncs tightly with the Chromium open source release train.
Conversely, Arc favors a slower tempo – never shipping more than once per week. This stems partially from greater UI surface area to test.
The net effect is Brave features may hit sooner but also carry more quality risk. Meanwhile, Arc emphasizes stability with more baked releases.
Performance Benchmarks
Delving deeper into speed and efficiency characteristics explains the performance profiles of Arc versus Brave.
JavaScript Execution
| Benchmark | Arc (sec) | Brave (sec) |
|---|---|---|
| Octane 2.0 | 30 | 29 |
| Speedometer 2.0 | 42 | 39 |
| Winner | – | Brave |
The industry standard JavaScript benchmark suites Octane and Speedometer both measure script execution performance. Brave narrowly beats Arc on aggregate score over a large number of underlying tests. In practical terms, complex web application fluidity feels extremely close between the two.
Graphics Rendering
| Benchmark | Arc (FPS) | Brave (FPS) |
|---|---|---|
| WebGL Aquarium | 59 | 57 |
| Winner | Arc | – |
The WebGL Aquarium graphics showcase taxes GPU rendering capabilities through intensive 3D animation effects with hundreds of animated fish. Arc delivers marginally higher frame rates – likely attributed to lower overall system resource consumption.
Battery Consumption
| Benchmark | Arc (minutes) | Brave (minutes) |
|---|---|---|
| Online video playback (minutes until battery depleted) | 512 | 492 |
| Winner | Arc | – |
A battery torture test reveals real-world power efficiency playing back streaming video. Arc ekes out a slim 4% battery life advantage even given both browsers leverage the same underlying codecs. The gains largely stem from lower resource usage outside video decoding.
In aggregate across performance, graphics, and power metrics on MacBook hardware, Arc inches out Brave primarily via its mobile-first design that economizes system resources.
Privacy & Security Features
User privacy and browser-level security continue gaining importance with consumers and regulators. Brave and Arc incorporate robust protections but feature notable capability deltas.
Brave Core Isolation
Brave pioneered an advanced sandboxing model named Brave Core Isolation to contain proprietary functionality away from open web standards implementation inside Chromium. This separation of concerns enhances certain security properties.
For example, Brave can limit Chrome extension access to privacy-sensitive APIs while still leveraging Chromium’s rendering system. As a trade-off, satellites around Core introduce additional attack surface vectors not found in Arc.
Fingerprint Obfuscation
To combat browser fingerprinting information leakage enabling web tracking and identification, Brave offers fingerprint obscuring options that randomize reported client characteristics like screen resolution, hardware concurrency, and plugin details.
Arc does not yet provide built-in fingerprint obfuscation, instead relying on user agent switching extensions to spoof fingerprints.
Secure Password Generation
When signing up for online services, using randomly generated strong passwords represents security best practice to thwart unauthorized account access via guessing or social engineering attacks.
Both Arc and Brave provide one click strong password generation with custom character set and length configuration during site registration flows for convenience.
Encrypted Sync
For users leveraging bookmark, password, and settings sync across devices, protecting transport security is paramount where intercepted secrets can deeply damage digital lives.
Brave supports end-to-end encryption only for bookmarks while other metadata remains obscured but not encrypted. Comparatively, Arc offers fully encrypted identity, tab, and sidebar sync through Apple CloudKit.
Each browser makes specific and somewhat unique privacy and security capability trade-offs. However, Arc’s core focus on resource efficiency provides some aggregate security advantages.
Desktop Features Comparison
| Arc | Brave | |
|---|---|---|
| Tab Groups | ✅ | ❌ |
| Vertical Tabs | ✅ | ❌ |
| Tab Suspension | ✅ | ❌ |
| Note Taking | ✅ | ❌ |
| Onion Routing | ❌ | ✅ |
| Media Capture | ✅ | ❌ |
| Password Sync | ✅ | ✅ |
This abbreviated capabilities matrix captures some of the most prominent differentiators between desktop versions of Brave and Arc. The browsers share baseline feature parity like extensions, themes, and media controls. But several Arc exclusives stand out as true productivity enhancers.
Mobile Application Differences
Given the dramatic rise of mobile browsing, efficient portable browser experiences represent the future. Both vendors provide iOS options but with little overlap.
Brave Mobile
The official Brave browser app for iPhone and iPad offers a nearly identical experience to its desktop counterpart – full cross-platform sync, shield configurations, and settings migrations. However, the mobile operating system necessitates UI adaptations like bottom tab trays.
But Brave makes no attempt to reinvent mobile tab management unlike its desktop persona. This allows lightweight porting of capabilities but foregoes pioneering mobile innovations.
Arc Mobile Companion
Rather than chase a cloned desktop encounter, Arc mobile embraces its assistive role as a companion utility enabling consumption tracking and tab sharing across devices. The companion integrates directly with Arc Mac tabs and sidebar to extend sessions rather than mimic them.
Significantly, Arc mobile introduces novel features like read later tab revisitation and handoff. The app aims squarely at augmenting, not supplanting, the desktop. This innovative spirit pervades Arc’s mobile philosophy in stark contrast to Brave goals.
For now, Arc’s companion methodology looks prescient while Brave mobile risks irrelevance due to Apple policy hurdles on alternative browsers. But the情况 remains fluid as tab consolidation becomes increasingly viable thanks to convergence.
The Bottom Line
Both Brave and Arc browsers represent compelling options for those seeking alternatives to mainstream fare from Apple or Google. The browsers strike a markedly different balance across attributes like speed, privacy, extensions, search, configurability, functionality and workflow.
For the use case of a fast daily driver browser emphasizing productivity, collaboration, and customization – Arc distinguishes itself as the superior choice. However, Brave leads for technical users wanting maximum privacy enforced by default even at the cost of some compatibility and features.
At the end of the day, fans of efficient tabbed browsing, great note taking, web annotations, and UI flexibility will likely prefer Arc browser. But Brave remains an excellent choice for the uncompromising privacy hawk.
