Jan 07, 2026 16:00:00

Brave web browser revamps ad blocking engine to reduce memory consumption by 75%

Brave , a web browser that comes with built-in ad and tracker blocking features, has announced that it has revamped its ad blocking engine, reducing memory consumption by 75%. The update is already available in Brave v1.85, and optimizations will be implemented in Brave v1.86.

Brave overhauls adblock engine, cutting its memory consumption by 75% | Brave
https://brave.com/privacy-updates/36-adblock-memory-reduction/

Below is an image comparing memory consumption between Brave v1.79 and Brave v1.85, which shows a reduction from 162MB to 104MB.

Specifically, the following four points were mentioned:

Memory Management : Using stack allocation vectors reduces memory allocation by 19%, speeding up build times by approximately 15%

Matching speed : Tokenizing common regular expression patterns improves filter matching performance by 13%

Resource Sharing : Shares resources between instances of the ad blocking engine, saving approximately 2MB of memory on desktop environments

Storage Efficiency : Optimize internal resource storage memory by 30%

Brave says memory consumption has been reduced to 75% of previous levels, resulting in improved battery life and smoother multitasking for all users.

Brave is available for PC, Android, and iOS, and it claims to save approximately 45MB of memory across all platforms, with even greater benefits for users who have additional ad blocking enabled.

Performance improvements have already been made available in v1.85, with additional optimizations coming in the upcoming v1.86.

Brave described this achievement as 'the culmination of months of collaborative development between our performance and privacy teams,' and said it represents a major leap in browser performance, ensuring that the company will continue to provide the highest level of privacy protection to its more than 100 million users.