You should be concerned about your online privacy when browsing the internet. Why? Online marketers are keen to monetize you by tracking your browser activity, browser cookies, IP address, and device-specific identifiers. The best private browsers put the brakes on those activities, making your online life at least a little more private. At PCMag, we’ve been covering browsers since the dawn of the web, so we have the expertise to help you choose the best one for your privacy. Our top pick is Brave, but we recommend reading about all of your options below. We also cover how online tracking works, the value of using a private browser, and more options for protecting your privacy.
Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
EDITORS’ NOTE
November 12, 2025: With this update, our lineup of recommended private browsers remains unchanged. We have vetted the existing picks for currency and availability.
(Credit: Brave)
(Credit: Brave)
Brave emphasizes ad-blocking and privacy. At the same time, it lets you earn cryptocurrency while you browse. Like the majority of modern browsers, Brave relies on a customized version of Chromium (the code that powers Google Chrome), so it’s compatible with most websites. Brave has higher goals than simply letting you hoard crypto or even protecting your privacy. Its creators want to achieve a revolution in the way web commerce works, with direct micropayments taking the place of rampant web ads. To earn cryptocurrency rewards with Brave, the software periodically pops up an unobtrusive ad in a box outside the browser window—you can turn it off if you prefer.
The EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool reports “strong protection against Web tracking.” A feature called Shields blocks third-party ads and tracking cookies by default. Brave forces the secure HTTPS (something common among recent browsers) and lets you choose between Standard and Aggressive tracker-blocking and ad-blocking. Brave also has advanced fingerprinting protections that “randomize the output of semi-identifying browser features” and turn off features that sites commonly use to sniff device info. In our brief tests, Brave was the only browser for which the EFF tool reported a randomized fingerprint. Brave offers other privacy-focused products, including for messaging, news, search, and video calling. A VPN option that cloaks all apps on your system costs $9.99 per month. The browser even now has generative AI tools that summarize web pages and generate text.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows
(Credit: DuckDuckGo)
(Credit: DuckDuckGo)
The famed private search provider DuckDuckGo has a standalone desktop and mobile web browser. The Chromium-based browser boasts some design niceties. For example, a flame button at the top, sort of a panic button, lets you close tabs and delete browsing data instantly. The search bar is centered and on the same line as the back and forward navigation buttons for a clean and clear look. The new tab page offers custom site buttons and a list of previous sites you visited, with a count of how many trackers it found and blocked for each.
The browser also includes automatic cookie consent management for pop-ups and support for the emerging Global Privacy Control standard. It has Duck Player for playing YouTube videos without Google ads, which worked well in testing and could be reason enough to install the DuckDuckGo web browser.
You can also install the DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extension in your existing desktop browser to make it more private. It blocks third-party trackers, switches your search engine to its privacy-focused one, forces sites to use an encrypted HTTPS connection where available, and lets you see a privacy score for sites you visit. The extension raised Chrome’s score on the EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool to “strong protection,” which was also the score for the standalone DuckDuckGo browser.
Platforms: Android, iOS, macOS, Windows
(Credit: Hidden Reflex)
(Credit: Hidden Reflex)
Epic Privacy Browser includes VPN-like functionality with its encrypted proxy, which hides your IP address from the web at large. The company claims that Epic blocks ads, cryptomining, trackers, and even ultrasound signaling! It also blocks fingerprint tracking scripts and prevents WebRTC.
When you tap Epic’s umbrella button to enable the built-in version of uBlock, the EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool reports “strong protection” against web tracking, though with a unique browser fingerprint.
The browser’s interface looks almost identical to that of Chrome, aside from the included privacy and proxy extension buttons. Otherwise, it lacks special convenience features from competitors like Edge.
Platforms: Android, iOS, macOS, Windows
(Credit: Firefox)
(Credit: Firefox)
Mozilla has long been at the forefront of trying to improve privacy on the web. Its Firefox browser is a free and open-source alternative that doesn’t use the Chromium code base. The company introduced the Do Not Track initiative, and Firefox was the first browser to feature a private browsing mode that could hide browsing activity not only from people with access to your device but also from the sites you visit. Firefox’s Total Cookie Protection places each site’s cookies in a separate web container, preventing sites from sharing your data.
Its Enhanced Tracking Protection’s Standard setting blocks cross-site cookies in Private Windows, cross-site tracking cookies, cryptominers, fingerprinters, tracking content in Private Windows, and social media trackers. Firefox includes built-in support for the Global Privacy Control initiative, which requests that sites not share or sell your private data.
The EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool reports “strong protection against web tracking” at this setting. Strict mode blocks trackers hidden in ads, videos, and other site content. Firefox’s standard fingerprinting protection uses a list of known and suspected fingerprint trackers, and another feature called Resist Fingerprinting “limits the personal characteristics of a user’s operating system and hardware exposed to websites.” However, its support page states that this setting can break some websites. On privacytests.org, Firefox does better than the big first-party browsers, but doesn’t check off as many boxes as Brave, LibreWolf, and Mullvad.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows
(Credit: LibreWolf)
(Credit: LibreWolf)
LibreWolf is a modified version of the open-source Firefox browser that hardens security and removes any whiff of “phoning home” that many browsers do, particularly those from big tech vendors like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. LibreWolf won’t win any design awards with its bare-bones interface, and it offers little in the way of browsing conveniences aside from the standard bookmarks, tabs, and history, but that’s not its point.
Librewolf comes with the excellent uBlock anti-tracking extension and uses the non-data-gathering DuckDuckGo as its default search engine. The browser gets excellent scores on the PrivacyTests.org open-source set of web browser privacy measurements, and the EFF’s Cover Your Tracks fingerprinting test reports “strong protection against web tracking.” So intent on not sending any data to servers is the browser that it turns off the Google Safe Browsing protection that’s active in standard Firefox.
Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows
(Credit: Mullvad)
(Credit: Mullvad)
Mullvad Browser uses Mozilla’s open-source Firefox code base. It’s a collaboration between the Mullvad VPN service and the Tor Project. It looks just like the Tor browser but doesn’t offer actual Tor functionality (unlike the Brave browser). Mullvad, however, does implement protections against AI-powered privacy threats with its DAITA (Defense against AI-guided Traffic Analysis) technology.
Mullvad has its own leak test, which is sort of self-serving since only browsers set to use Mullvad’s DNS servers pass it. The browser comes with the excellent uBlock Origin ad- and tracker-blocking extension. And the default search provider is DuckDuckGo, which is better for privacy than Google or Bing. The Mullvad browser pushes you toward signing up for the company’s Mullvad VPN service, but at least that’s among our Editors’ Choice winners for VPNs. The browser does very well on both the PrivacyTests.org suite and on EFF’s Cover Your Tracks test, which shows that it blocks ads and invisible trackers and has a non-unique fingerprint.
Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows
(Credit: Tor Project)
(Credit: Tor Project)
Pros & Cons
Easily connects to the Tor anonymizing network
Simple interface for complex security tools
Feature-rich browser
Integrated privacy tools
Slows down browsing
Finding localized websites can be difficult
Some privacy features may be confusing to novice users
The Tor (it stands for the onion router) browser’s slogan is, “Protect yourself against tracking, surveillance, and censorship.” It provides a multistep encrypted route for your browsing that makes identifying you very difficult. It offers even more privacy than a VPN because your encrypted traffic goes through at least three nodes. The first node knows the source but not the destination of the traffic, the middle ones know neither, and the last knows only the destination. This system makes it nearly impossible to trace traffic back to you. Tor also lets you access sites that use its onion protocol on the dark web.
The downsides? It slows down your browsing, and some sites don’t play well with it. For instance, if you crank up Tor to its safest level of protection and disable JavaScript, a lot of common sites won’t run—basically anything that features interactive content, such as YouTube.
The EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool reports “strong protection against web tracking” but that “your browser has a non-unique fingerprint.” It also reported the lowest amount of identifying data of any browser I tested, under 10 bits. Tor came in fourth on the PrivacyTests.org browser tests, with 132 passes behind Brave (143), Mullvad (141), and LibreWolf (139).
An even more private way to run Tor is through Tails, a lightweight operating system based on Ubuntu that you run off a USB drive. Tails doesn’t save any unencrypted data from your browsing session and leaves no traces on your computer’s drive.
Platforms: Android, Linux, macOS, Windows
Learn More
Tor Browser Review
(Credit: Waterfox)
(Credit: Waterfox)
Waterfox is based on the same Gecko web rendering engine that powers Firefox. The organization behind Waterfox recently became independent of its corporate owner, so it’s now an open-source project. The browser’s docs include a clear, reassuring privacy policy, and it uses the same Enhanced Tracking Protection as Firefox. The browser site claims that “unless you specifically register for a web service with us, we do not want or touch your personal data.” The tracking protection in Waterfox is identical to that in Firefox, which claims to protect against cross-site tracking cookies, cryptominers, fingerprinters, social media trackers, and trackers hidden in ads, videos, and other content. For more privacy, you can turn off WebRTC.
Like Firefox, Waterfox lets you sync add-ons, bookmarks, history, passwords, settings, and tabs. The browser uses Oblivious DNS, which obscures your website requests from your ISP, a boon to privacy. You can also use any extensions and themes designed for Firefox. The EFF’s Cover Your Tracks test reports strong protection against tracking with Waterfox’s default privacy setting. The test, however, reports a unique fingerprint despite the browser’s claim of fingerprint protection. Like with most of the browsers here, that feature uses only a block list rather than actually randomizing fingerprint data like Brave. It currently defaults to Bing for web searches for financial support, but you can, of course, change your search provider to something more privacy-focused like DuckDuckGo, and the Waterfox developers are working on a first-party private search option.
Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows
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Buying Guide: Lose the Trackers: The Best Private Browsers for 2025
How Are You Being Tracked on the Web Right Now?
Cookies and digital fingerprinting are the two biggest culprits.
Cookies are small bits of data that websites deposit in your browser’s storage to track where you’ve already logged in and other site activity, such as when you have items in an online shopping cart. They’re essential to making the web more usable. Privacy issues arise when third-party cookies (most often from Google, Facebook, or an advertising service) unrelated to the site you are viewing are dropped into your browser. Other websites then have access to that information, allowing them to view your internet history. (Google no longer plans to remove support for third-party cookies in its Chrome browser.)
Digital fingerprinting is a method that utilizes web page headers and JavaScript to create a profile of you based on your system configuration. Your browser fingerprint can consist of your browser type and version, operating system, plug-ins, time zone, language, screen resolution, installed fonts, and other data. Even if you turn off third-party cookies, sites might still be able to identify you via fingerprinting.
Fingerprinting is a more worrisome privacy concern than cookies. You can delete cookies at any time, but unless you get a new device or use a browser that randomizes the info, you can’t escape your digital fingerprint. Brave is the only browser here that offers to randomize fingerprint info.
Another issue is the long string of characters some sites add when you copy a web address. Those characters also identify you. A browser extension called ClearURLs can help protect against that kind of tracking.
What Is Global Privacy Control?
A recent development in browser privacy is Global Privacy Control (GPC). Many browsers are built with this capability, and you can also obtain it via extensions. However, I’m not a fan of most extensions when it comes to privacy since they have access to all your browsing.
GPC is similar to Mozilla’s well-intentioned Do Not Track initiative, which was introduced a decade ago and later became part of the W3C web browser standard. However, Google’s discouraging implementation of it in Chrome ultimately led to its demise. GPC, on the other hand, is getting legal teeth from things like the California Consumer Protection Act, which could make it more successful than Do Not Track. Brave, DuckDuckGO, and Firefox already support GPC, and you can expect it to appear in others as legal requirements arise.
Is Incognito Mode Safe?
Private browsers differ from and, in some ways, surpass the so-called incognito or private browsing mode in a typical browser. Those modes simply remove browsing history from a session so that someone using the browser after you doesn’t see what websites you’ve been browsing. Passwords, cookies, and browsing history are gone after you close the private session, but the mode doesn’t prevent the sites you visit from tracking you. Mozilla has a list of common myths about private browsing mode that’s helpful.
How Can You Prevent Web Tracking?
Some browsers offer more protection for your privacy. For example, Edge and Safari block known fingerprinters based on block lists, and Firefox is working on a behavioral blocking system that alerts you if a site tries to perform actions that look like fingerprinting—for example, trying to extract your hardware specs using the HTML Canvas feature. That experimental Firefox tool removes identifying data that fingerprinters use.
Another privacy protection feature being implemented in browsers such as Firefox and Edge is support for more secure DNS protocols. That’s the system of servers that your browser contacts to translate text web addresses into their number equivalents that web servers use. By default, your ISP’s DNS servers provide this translation, but secure browsers now use DoH (DNS over HTTPS) to both encrypt the connection and prevent your ISP from sending your unfound browsing requests to their search providers.
How Do You Know If You’re Trackable on the Web?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) publishes a Cover Your Tracks web page to test your browser’s susceptibility to tracking and fingerprinting. It uses a real tracking company—the name of which it does not reveal—for its tests. Be forewarned: It almost always reports that your browser has a unique fingerprint. Note that, at best, Chrome shows only Partial protection and a unique fingerprint on this test. Other tools you can use to see your digital fingerprint include AmIUnique and Device Info. The latter has a section that indicates whether it detects any fingerprinting.
Recommended by Our Editors
Another good source for browser privacy that encompasses more than fingerprint tracking is PrivacyTests.org, which bills itself as “Open-source tests of web browser privacy.” This test clearly shows shortcomings in the big-tech browsers, Chrome, Edge, and especially Safari. The top scorers on this (out of 156 checked privacy items) are Brave (143), Mullvad Browser (141), and LibreWolf (139).
If you still want to use Chrome or another browser that doesn’t offer tracking protection, you can turn to plug-ins that might help protect your privacy. Notable options are Decentraleyes, DuckDuckGo, PrivacyBadger, or uBlock Origin. Note that Google now uses an extension platform called Manifest V3, which compromises the full functionality of these extensions.
Which Browser Is the Most Private?
Brave and Tor have the most effective protection against tracking among the browsers here. Brave was the only browser for which the EFF’s Cover Your Tracks test reports strong protection and a randomized fingerprint. Not only that, Brave has a private window mode that uses Tor, which routes your traffic through multiple proxies to make you anonymous online. Tor also has vulnerabilities, however.
As with everything in life, there’s no such thing as perfect security or privacy. However, using one of these browsers can at least make it harder for entities to track your internet browsing.
It’s Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online
