Brave user numbers rise 29% as search volumes jump 56%

Privacy-first browser and search engine expands its advertising business with new client wins and AI-powered search and shopping capabilities

Brave Browser & Search Engine has reported strong growth in users and search activity in 2026, alongside new client wins across retail, travel and finance. The company has also expanded its advertising offering to allow clients to enhance their paid search listings with retail product data, while developing its AI-powered search and browsing tools.

Brave’s user numbers rose from 101 million in October 2025 to more than 130 million in October 2026, an increase of 29%. Search volumes grew faster still, rising 56% year on year from 1.73 billion queries in October 2025 to 2.7 billion in October 2026. On 31 August, Brave recorded 85.5 million queries in a single day. Advertising revenue has grown by 2.85x year on year.

“2026 has been a year of sustained, substantial growth for Brave,” said Andy Squire, RVP Sales EMEA. “Consumers are looking for more control over their data and their privacy, and are turning to alternatives that offer a faster, safer way to browse and search. That growing audience creates opportunities for advertisers to reach people in a different environment.”

Brave has added retail clients in Germany, France and the US, expanded its client base and product scope in travel, and signed new banking and lending clients in the UK, US and Germany.

The company has also begun working with IWG, the world’s largest flexible workspace provider and owner of the Regus brand. IWG is using Brave to reach additional, high-intent demand beyond the major search platforms, with performance significantly outperforming its established search channels.

The company has also broadened its search advertising offer. Alongside its existing search term targeting, Brave Search now supports organic and sponsored Product Listing Ads (PLAs). Merchants can enhance their paid search listings with product feeds containing information such as prices, images and specifications.

The expansion gives advertisers another way to reach consumers through Brave Search, while enabling users to discover products directly within search results.

Brave launched Ask Brave in early 2026, an AI-powered answer engine that combines information from across the web to deliver concise responses alongside organic and sponsored results. More than 50 million queries are answered through Brave Search each day, with around a third triggering an AI-generated summary.

Ask Brave cites the sources used in its answers and is designed to operate without user profiling. Queries and responses are encrypted, are not used to train AI models, and are automatically deleted after 24 hours of inactivity.

Brave has also continued to develop its AI tools for developers and browser users. Its Leo assistant, built into the Brave Browser, can summarise and analyse webpages and documents, including PDFs and spreadsheets, translate content and help users create new material.

In February, Brave introduced a revamped Search API for developers building AI applications. The release added improved search capabilities, expanded developer tools and new pricing plans. Research published alongside the launch found that less powerful open-weight language models could outperform leading models when supplied with higher-quality data from the Brave Search API.

“We have heard a lot about search being dead during 2026, but our numbers tell a different story,” said Jean-Paul Schmetz, Board Observer and Chief of Ads at Brave. “People still want to find information, compare options and discover products. What’s changing is how they want to do it, and the level of privacy and control they expect along the way.

“The growth we’re seeing, alongside adoption by major search advertisers such as Amazon, Booking.com and, MoneySuperMarket gives us a strong foundation for 2027. We’ll continue to develop our offering around what users and advertisers need.”

Source: Brave

  AdTech, Agency, AI, Brave, Expansion, growth