Brave is one of the best Chrome alternatives if privacy is your top priority. However, despite some useful additions, it feels bloated with all of its AI, rewards, and crypto integrations, often requiring you to turn off half of them just to make it usable.
Helium is a new cross-platform browser that prioritizes privacy without the bloat of Brave. It’s built on Ungoogled Chromium, comes with uBlock Origin baked in, and lets you opt out of everything during setup. Is this the Chrome alternative Brave promised to be? After a week with it, I think it’s close, very close.
- OS
-
macOS, Windows, Linux
- Price model
-
Free
Helium Browser is a privacy-focused, open-source web browser designed for people who value a clutter-free experience. It features unbiased ad-blocking, no bloat, and a user-friendly, noise-free interface.
Minimal interface
Starts with a completely blank page
Helium Browser offers a bare-bones interface. The home page has no shortcuts, no widgets, no news feed, not even a background image, though you can set one if you want. It’s just you and a search box.
Compare this to Brave’s interface, which has grown cluttered over the years. Between the Brave Rewards prompts, news cards, and more self-promotion on the new tab page, you have to do some cleanup before it feels usable. Helium skips all of that from the start.
The browser uses DuckDuckGo as the default search engine, but you can switch to your preferred provider in the Settings. The toolbar is equally minimal, showing only the built-in ad blocker, extension, and profile options. However, you can customize the toolbar to show more or fewer options in the Appearance tab, which is a nice touch for those who want quick access to specific features. For instance, the split-screen feature is hidden by default, so you’ll need to enable it from the Toolbar section.
Based on Chromium
Supports all Chrome extensions, but is resource-efficient
Helium is based on the lightweight Ungoogled Chromium browser. So it uses the popular Chromium engine, but removes Google’s web service dependencies to enhance privacy, control, and transparency. Unlike Brave, which is also a Chromium fork with the company’s own vision baked in, Helium works as a drop-in replacement for Chromium.
For any solid Chrome alternative, using Chromium as the engine makes sense. It offers a stable base while also giving access to the vast library of Chrome’s Web Store and its extensions. You won’t have to hunt for alternatives to your favorite extensions.
Resource efficiency is where Helium shines. It consumes less memory than Brave for the same set of tabs. This is expected from a Ungoogled Chromium fork, but it’s nice to see it work in practice. The Task Manager on my PC recorded noticeably lower system resource usage during extended browsing sessions.
Helium also includes some handy features that power users will appreciate. There’s a Split Screen mode, disabled by default, that you can enable from the Appearance tab. And then there are Helium Bangs, which are search shortcuts similar to DuckDuckGo’s bangs. Type an exclamation mark followed by a keyword, like !gh for GitHub or !w for Wikipedia, and it sends your search query directly to that site. Helium supports over 10,700 bangs, making it incredibly efficient for those who frequently jump between different websites.
Big on privacy
Built-in ad and tracker blocker
Much like Brave, Helium is private by default. During the setup process, it lets you opt out of all Helium services entirely. This level of transparency is refreshing. You get to decide exactly what data, if any, leaves your browser.
The browser comes with uBlock Origin built in, which blocks ads, trackers, and cryptocurrency miners out of the box. Third-party cookies are blocked by default, too. There’s no Google telemetry or background data collection happening. Only user-initiated actions connect to external services.
Helium also includes anti-fingerprinting measures and WebRTC leak protection. In real-world tests, the browser blocks WebRTC leaks effectively, which protects your real IP address from exposure through peer-to-peer connections. Even the Chrome Web Store downloads are anonymized through Helium’s own proxy services, preventing Google from correlating your extension installs.
For those who want complete control, all privacy settings are visible and tweakable. You can even disable all connections for a fully offline setup. The entire codebase and related services are open source, so you can inspect them yourself or self-host the proxy services for even greater privacy.
What’s missing
Lacks DRM support, built-in translation, a password manager, and sync
Helium is not perfect in the sense that it doesn’t have all the features you’d expect from a conventional browser, including Brave. There’s no built-in password manager or cloud sync. This is intentional for privacy reasons, as keeping sensitive data out of the browser is part of the design philosophy. You’ll need to rely on third-party password managers like Bitwarden or 1Password. Even then, you should stop storing passwords in your Browsers’ password manager for security reasons.
DRM support is also missing, which means some streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video may not work. The browser still generates a unique fingerprint, like most Chromium forks. And while auto-updates work on macOS, Linux, and Windows, users need to update manually.
Helium Browser is a solid, no-nonsense alternative to Brave
Despite these limitations, Helium Browser delivers on its promise of being a privacy-focused browser without the bloat. It’s not trying to be everything to everyone. Instead, it focuses on doing a few things well: blocking trackers, respecting your privacy while being lightning quick.
If you’re tired of disabling features every time you install a new browser, Helium is worth a look. It’s the kind of browser that just works while keeping your data where it belongs, on your device. For privacy-conscious users who want Chromium’s compatibility without Google’s ecosystem or Brave’s extras, Helium Browser is a great place to start.
