🇺🇸 USA · Brave Leo
Status: 🟩 COMPLETE 🟦 LIVING Plain-English tagline: Brave browser’s built-in AI assistant — anonymous, privacy-routed, free in Brave, with summarisation, chat, and translation right in the sidebar.
Front-matter facts
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Vendor | Brave Software Inc (San Francisco, USA) |
| Country / origin | 🇺🇸 USA |
| Recommended for Australian users? | ✅ Yes — fully accessible from AUS, no account required for basic use, AUD billing for premium |
| Privacy summary | Brave does not store chats by default, anonymises requests, doesn’t require an account for free use. One of the strongest privacy postures of any browser-integrated AI. |
| Free tier | Yes — built into Brave browser for free; uses Llama 3.x or Mixtral or Brave’s own routing |
| Paid tiers | Brave Leo Premium US25) — adds Claude Sonnet, GPT-4o family, longer conversations |
| First released | November 2023 |
| Last reviewed | 2026-06-26 |
| Official site | https://brave.com/leo/ |
What it is
Leo is Brave browser’s built-in AI sidebar. Brave is a privacy-focused web browser (founded by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript). Leo adds AI capabilities to Brave’s existing privacy-respecting browser: summarise the page you’re reading, ask questions about it, chat with the AI, translate content — all without sending your activity to Google, Microsoft, or anyone else who would profile you.
Inside Brave, click the Leo icon in the address bar (or the speech-bubble in the sidebar) and the AI panel opens with the current webpage as context.
Available models include:
- Llama 3.3 / Llama 4 70B (Meta, hosted by Brave on Western infrastructure)
- Mixtral 8x7B (Mistral)
- Brave-hosted routing
- Claude Sonnet (Premium tier)
- GPT-4o family (Premium tier)
Like DuckDuckGo AI Chat, Brave Leo’s free tier uses smaller/faster model variants; Premium unlocks the bigger frontier models.
What you’d use it for
- Summarise the page you’re reading — single-click summarisation in the browser sidebar
- Ask questions about the current page — without copy-pasting into another tool
- Translate the current page conversationally
- Quick AI chat in your browser without switching apps
- Privacy-respecting AI within a privacy-respecting browser — pair with Brave’s ad-blocking + tracker-blocking for a consistently private experience
How to sign up + first 5 minutes from Australia
- Download Brave browser from brave.com (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android).
- Install and open Brave.
- Click the Leo icon in the address bar (looks like a small speech-bubble or “Leo” badge).
- Accept the terms.
- Free tier is active immediately — no account needed.
- Try it:
- Visit any article → click Leo → “Summarise this page”
- Highlight text on a webpage → right-click → “Ask Leo about this”
- Use the sidebar chat for general questions
- Optional — Brave Leo Premium. US$15/month for Claude Sonnet + GPT-4o access. Subscribe via Brave Settings → Leo → Premium.
What it costs — what you actually get
Free (anyone with Brave browser)
- Llama / Mixtral / Brave-routed models
- Page summarisation
- In-page Q&A
- Sidebar chat
- Translation
- Anonymous (no account needed)
Brave Leo Premium — US25 incl GST)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 access
- GPT-4o family access
- Higher daily message limits
- Longer conversation context
- Higher rate limits during peak hours
How it compares to alternatives
| Capability | Brave Leo (Premium) | DuckDuckGo AI Chat | Edge Copilot | Chrome Gemini |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browser integration | Native in Brave | Webpage (duck.ai) | Native in Edge | Native in Chrome |
| Privacy posture | Strong (anonymous default) | Strong | Microsoft tracking | Google tracking |
| Account required | No (free); yes (Premium) | No | Microsoft account | Google account |
| Model picker | Yes (Premium) | Yes | No | No (Gemini only) |
| Page summarisation | Yes (built-in) | No (copy-paste) | Yes | Yes |
| Price | Free / US$15 | Free | Free | Free |
For “AI in your browser without being tracked,” Brave Leo is the strongest pick.
Privacy / data handling
- No account required for free tier — anonymous use
- Chats not stored by default on Brave servers
- IP anonymised before forwarding to model providers
- Model providers don’t train on requests routed through Brave (per Brave’s agreements)
- Premium subscription requires email but chat content remains anonymised
For deeper Brave Leo privacy details, see brave.com/privacy/browser/#leo.
Recent changes
- 2026: Llama 4 added to free tier; Claude Sonnet 4.6 in Premium
- 2025: Page-context handling improved
- 2024: Initial launch and expansion across desktop / iOS / Android
Gotchas
- Only works in Brave browser. Not a standalone web product. If you don’t use Brave, this isn’t for you.
- Premium models change over time — Brave’s agreements with Anthropic / OpenAI rotate which models are available
- Page summarisation can fail on heavily JavaScript-rendered pages that haven’t fully loaded
- No image gen, no voice, no Artifacts — text-only browser-integrated chat
- Premium subscription does NOT include Brave VPN — those are separate add-ons
See also
- DuckDuckGo AI Chat 🟩 🟦 — similar privacy posture, web-based not browser-integrated
- Kagi Assistant 🟥 — paid privacy alternative
- ChatGPT 🟩 🟦
- Claude.ai consumer 🟩 🟦
- Microsoft Copilot in Edge 🟥
- Chrome Gemini 🟥
- Dia browser 🟥
- Comet browser (Perplexity) 🟥
- privacy-and-data-training.md 🟩 🟦