How to identify Brave Browser from the User-Agent
Brave Browser is a free, open-source web browser that boasts increased security and privacy for its users. Brave obscures browser device data, which some believe can be used to create a unique identifier for the user.
To support browser identification, most browsers include their name (or an abbreviated name), in the User-Agent. However, Brave pretends to be Google Chrome in the User-Agent string.
Here is an example of a Brave User-Agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/124.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
No mention of Brave.
When Brave User-Agent Client Hints are enabled, the name is present:
sec-ch-ua-platform: '"Windows"' sec-ch-ua-model: '""' sec-ch-ua-mobile: ?0 sec-ch-ua-platform-version: '"10.0.0"' sec-ch-ua-full-version-list: '"Chromium";v="124.0.0.0", "Brave";v="124.0.0.0", "Not-A.Brand";v="99.0.0.0"' sec-ch-ua: '"Chromium";v="124", "Brave";v="124", "Not-A.Brand";v="99"'
But when Client Hints are not available, JavaScript needs to be used.
How to detect Brave from the User-Agent
Brave is built using the Chromium source project, so there’s some element of truth to Brave reporting as Chrome.
Brave also follows the Chromium release schedule, and the version of Brave increases at the same rate as the version of Chromium.
| Version | Chromium | Migration Date | Release Date | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.63.x | 122 | February 14, 2024 | February 22, 2024 | Release delayed. Originally scheduled to release on February 20, 2024 |
| 1.64.x | 123 | March 13, 2024 | March 20, 2024 | Release delayed. Originally scheduled to release on March 19, 2024. |
| 1.65.x | 124 | April 10, 2024 | April 17, 2024 | Release delayed. Originally scheduled to release on April 16, 2024. |
From the User-Agent we can tell the version of the Brave Browser, but how do we know that it is Brave and not Chrome?
JavaScript properties included in the 51Degrees’ device and browser detection service make this very easy:
- JavascriptBrowserOverride. A JavaScript snippet that will determine what the browser is used.
We also include the following properties to help the curious developer understand the relationship between the open source browser engine and consumer facing versions:
- BrowserSourceProject. The name of the underlying browser source project.
- BrowserSourceProjectVersion. The version or subversion of the underlying browser source project.
Benefits of detecting Brave Browser
Brave includes an ad blocker and its own advertising model. The Brave Rewards program replaces existing advertisements on websites with adverts from the Brave program. Users can then earn Brave-specific tokens for every ad they see.
Advertisers must sign up to the program if they want to show their adverts to a user who is using Brave. This bypasses the model used by most ad funded publishers where they work with advertisers directly or via approved suppliers.
With 51Degrees, publishers can easily understand the revenue differences between Chrome and Brave.
To try the new properties, you can test them for free with our Cloud Configurator. Or if you’d like to deploy our device detection within your own environment, you can contact us for more information.