Brave vs Firefox vs Mullvad: Who Stops Fingerprinting?

Updated June 30, 2026

Brave vs Firefox vs Mullvad: Who Stops Fingerprinting? (For Privacy-Minded Daily Drivers)

This is for the reader who already uses a password manager, maybe a virtual private network (VPN), and now wants to know which browser actually keeps ad networks from rebuilding a profile of them across the web.

Here's the short version: Brave scores the highest on the automated leaderboard at 143/156 on (https://privacytests.org/) — but that top score measures how hard you are to fingerprint by default tooling, not how well you survive an adversary who actually targets the defense. The winning trick, "farbling," was demonstrably broken in a peer-reviewed 2025 study. The browser that loses the leaderboard, Mullvad, may be the safer bet against a determined tracker. The right answer depends entirely on who you're hiding from.

Comparison Table

Feature	Brave	Firefox	Mullvad Browser
Price	Free	Free	Free (no tiers, no ads)
Engine	Chromium	Gecko (Firefox)	Firefox ESR 128 base
Anti-fingerprint strategy	Randomization (farbling)	RFP (opt-in) / FPP default	Uniformity (everyone identical)
PrivacyTests.org score	143/156	~weaker default; strong hardened	141/156
Protection on by default?	Yes (Shields)	Partial (must harden)	Yes
Telemetry	Limited	On by default	None
Standout feature	Per-session canvas/audio randomization	Familiar, extensible	Tor-grade uniformity, no VPN required
Biggest drawback	Randomization defeated in lab	Weak until manually hardened	Deliberately limited, less convenient
Best for	Chromium compatibility	Existing Firefox users	Strongest default anti-fingerprinting

Best For Picks

Best overall: Mullvad Browser. If your goal is to be genuinely hard to single out, uniformity beats cleverness. Mullvad standardizes one fingerprint across its entire user base using Firefox's resistFingerprinting, blocks WebGL readPixel, limits fonts, and applies letter boxing, so your window size doesn't leak (mullvad.net). (https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/) recommends it specifically for the strongest anti-fingerprinting out of the box.

Best budget: a three-way tie. All three are free. Mullvad is notable for having no premium tier, in-app ads, or subscriptions whatsoever (mullvad.net).

Best for compatibility-first users: Brave. It tops the automated rankings at 143/156 ((https://privacytests.org/)) while staying on Chromium, so the sites and extensions you already depend on keep working. Shields — tracker, script, and fingerprint blocking — is on by default (brave.com).

Brave: The Leaderboard Champion With an Asterisk

Brave's approach is randomization. Its "farbling" defense adds tiny, deterministic noise to canvas, audio, and WebGL output — but the noise is unique per session and per eTLD+1 domain (brave.com). The effect: a fingerprinter on one site sees a consistent identity within that session, but can't link you across sites. You look like a different person on every domain.

That earns Brave the highest automated score and makes it an excellent daily driver. The catch is structural. The ACM Web Conference 2025 paper "Breaking the Shield" analyzed built-in canvas defenses across five major browsers plus 18 extensions and demonstrated successful attacks on every randomization-based defense — Brave's included. A determined adversary can collect enough samples over time and average the noise away. Farbling also weakens when a fingerprinter has direct first-party access — visiting a fingerprinting service's own page directly, for instance.

Pros:
- Highest automated anti-fingerprinting score (143/156)
- Full Chromium compatibility for sites and extensions
- Strong protection on by default — no hardening required

Cons:
- Randomization defeated in peer-reviewed lab conditions
- Weaker against first-party fingerprinters
- The randomization itself can be a detectable signal

Mullvad: The Browser That Loses the Leaderboard On Purpose

Mullvad Browser is a collaboration between Mullvad VPN and the Tor Project, and it takes the opposite philosophy: uniformity. Instead of making you uniquely-but-falsely random, it makes you look exactly like every other Mullvad user (mullvad.net). Think of it like a uniform: a randomized disguise is clever until someone learns your disguise generator; a uniform works precisely because nobody can tell you apart from the crowd.

It scores 141/156 — two points below Brave ((https://privacytests.org/)) — but that gap is the point. The "Breaking the Shield" attacks targeted randomization. Uniformity doesn't give an attacker noise to average out; there's nothing to reverse-engineer. The current build, Mullvad Browser 14.0, is based on Firefox ESR 128 and strips all telemetry, isolates cookies per session, and runs on Windows 10+, macOS, and Linux (mullvad.net/blog). Notably, it needs no VPN to work — the anti-fingerprinting is built into the browser itself.

Pros:
- Uniformity defense not generically broken by 2025 research
- Zero telemetry, zero cost, zero upsells
- Tor Project–grade hardening without the Tor network's speed cost

Cons:
- Deliberately limited — some sites and conveniences break
- Two points behind Brave on automated suites
- Built on Firefox ESR, so it trails the newest web features

Firefox: Strong Only If You Do the Work

Out of the box, Firefox is rated weaker than both Brave and Mullvad — telemetry is on and protections are moderate ((https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/)). But it contains the same engine Mullvad builds on. Enable Resist Fingerprinting (RFP) via privacy.resistFingerprinting in about:config, switch Enhanced Tracking Protection to Strict mode, and Firefox ranks among the strongest browsers available.

There's a trap here, covered in the anonymity-set section below: a one-of-a-kind hardened Firefox config can make you more identifiable, not less. Firefox also ships a lighter default option — Fingerprinting Protection (FPP, sometimes called RFP Lite) — under Enhanced Tracking Protection for users who want compatibility (support.mozilla.org). One housekeeping note: Firefox v135 removed the "Do Not Track" checkbox entirely, since the signal was widely ignored by sites anyway.

Pros:
- Among the strongest browsers once RFP + Strict mode are enabled
- Familiar interface, huge extension library
- Gives you granular control

Cons:
- Weak until you manually harden it
- A unique hardened config can backfire (see below)
- Default telemetry is on

The Anonymity-Set Paradox

Here's what most comparisons miss. Imagine 200,000 people all using Mullvad Browser with the identical fingerprint. To a tracker, you're one indistinguishable face in a 200,000-person crowd. Now imagine you hand-tune Firefox with a rare font set, a custom user-agent, and three obscure privacy extensions. You may pass more privacy tests — but your combination is so unusual it might be one-in-a-million. The tracker doesn't need your name; "the person with this exact weird setup" is identifier enough.

This is why the highest score doesn't equal the most anonymity. Privacy isn't a number you maximize — it's a crowd you disappear into. Randomization (Brave) and uniformity (Mullvad) are two answers to the same cat-and-mouse game, and the fact that your fingerprint changes every session can itself be a tell that you're running anti-fingerprinting software.

Run the Test Yourself

You don't have to take any leaderboard's word for it. Run the same browser through these three free tools and compare:

1. (https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/) (Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF) — tells you whether your browser blocks trackers and whether your fingerprint is unique. It shows Brave delivering a randomized fingerprint and strong default tracker protection; treat its uniqueness metric as diagnostic, not a certification.
2. amiunique.org — shows how many other recorded visitors share your fingerprint. Lower "uniqueness" is better.
3. browserleaks.com — breaks down each surface (canvas, WebGL, fonts, audio) so you can see exactly what leaks.

Watch the canvas and WebGL fields. On Brave they'll shift between sessions (randomization); on Mullvad they'll match the standard Mullvad profile (uniformity). Both are working — they're just playing different games.

What Fingerprinting Protection Does Not Stop

A browser alone is not anonymity. Even a perfect anti-fingerprinting setup does nothing against: login-based tracking (the moment you sign into Google or Meta, you've named yourself), IP-level tracking (your address still identifies your connection — this is where a VPN matters), and behavioral fingerprinting (mouse movement, typing rhythm, scroll patterns). Match your tool to your threat model: defeating ad networks is a very different job from evading a determined or state-level adversary.

Pricing Breakdown

Browser	Price	Tiers	Hidden costs
Brave	Free	None for the browser	Optional rewards/VPN sold separately
Firefox	Free	None	None
Mullvad Browser	Free	None — no ads, no subscription	None (mullvad.net)

All three browsers cost nothing. Mullvad VPN is a separate paid product, but the browser is fully free and works without it.

How We Evaluated

We compared on five criteria: default anti-fingerprinting strength (per (https://privacytests.org/)), resilience against a targeted adversary (per the ACM WWW '25 study), out-of-the-box usability, telemetry/privacy posture, and cost. We weighted real-world adversarial resilience over raw automated scores. See our full methodology at /how-we-evaluate/.

Verdict

Winner: Mullvad Browser, for anyone whose actual goal is to be hard to single out. Its uniformity model is the one defense the 2025 research couldn't generically break, and it ships hardened with zero telemetry and zero cost.

Runner-up: Brave. It wins the automated leaderboard and is the better daily driver thanks to Chromium compatibility. The one scenario where Brave wins outright: you need full site and extension compatibility and your threat model is ordinary ad-tech tracking, not a determined adversary specifically targeting your browser's defense. For most people fending off advertisers, Brave is more than enough — and far more convenient.

Firefox is the right pick only if you refuse to switch browsers and are willing to enable RFP and Strict mode yourself.

Found an error? At Canopy Press, accuracy comes first. If you spot a claim that needs checking, let us know at [email protected] — we'll verify and correct it immediately.

Sources

• PrivacyTests.org — Open-source browser privacy tests
• Brave — Fingerprinting Defenses 2.0 (farbling)
• Mullvad Browser — Hard facts
• Mullvad Browser 14.0 released (Firefox ESR 128)
• Breaking the Shield: Attacking Canvas Fingerprinting Defenses (ACM Web Conference 2025)
• EFF — Cover Your Tracks
• Privacy Guides — Desktop Browsers
• Mozilla Support — Resist Fingerprinting

---

Some links are affiliate links — we may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products we've actually evaluated. See our editorial standards for more.

Found an error? At Canopy Press, accuracy comes first. If you spot a claim that needs checking, let us know at [email protected] — we'll verify and correct it immediately.