Brave gained 8.7 million new users in 12 months

The privacy-oriented web browser, Brave, has reported that it increased its monthly active users by 8.7 million compared to this time last year bringing the total count above 20 million. Brave also said that 7 million people are active on Brave every single day, up from 3 million last year. Both monthly active users and daily active users increased by 2.3 times over the last 12 months.

Commenting on the browser’s growth, Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave, said:

“Users are fed up with surveillance capitalism, and 20 million people have switched to Brave for an entirely new Web ecosystem with an opt-in ad economy that puts them back in control of their browsing experience. The global privacy movement is gaining traction, and this milestone is just one more step in our journey to make privacy-by-default a standard for all Web users.”

Aside from its user growth, the firm also shared that there are nearly one million verified creators and publishers. Last year there were 300,000 and now there are 972,000; this represents an increase of 3.2 times. Publishers and content creators are able to receive BAT tokens from users who have chosen to send them.

The Brave browser is just one of many browsers to jump on the privacy bandwagon that was largely initiated around 2013 when Edward Snowden revealed just how much surveillance was going on. Privacy in the web browser sphere, however, is a lot less focused on government surveillance and cares more about ad tracking that profiles users who browse websites.