Brave Leo

Brave Leo is a privacy-first AI assistant built directly into the Brave browser as a sidebar feature. It gives Brave users on-demand access to strong LLMs — Anthropic's Claude, Mistral's Mixtral, and Meta's Llama — without opening a separate chatbot site. It handles conversation, page summarization, translation, and Q&A about the current tab, all with a strong privacy stance.

Yes, Leo is free for all Brave browser users with access to default models (Mixtral, Llama) and reasonable daily limits. For heavier use or access to Claude Sonnet and other frontier models, Leo Premium costs $14.99/month (with an annual discount). Most casual users get enough value from the free tier without needing to upgrade.

Leo's main differentiator is privacy. ChatGPT requires an OpenAI account and, unless you disable training, uses your chats for model improvement. Leo routes queries through model providers without linking them to your identity, doesn't store chats beyond the session, and doesn't share data for training. It's also built into the Brave browser itself, so it's always one click away without visiting a separate site.

Leo gives free users access to open models like Mixtral 8x7B and Llama variants through Brave's privacy-preserving infrastructure. Leo Premium subscribers get access to Anthropic's Claude Sonnet, which is one of the strongest frontier models currently available. Brave has indicated it will continue adding new models as they become available.

Brave has one of the strongest privacy stances in the browser industry, and Leo follows the same philosophy. Chats are not linked to your Brave account, inputs are not used for model training, and conversations are not stored beyond the session by default. Queries are routed through Brave's anonymized infrastructure so the model provider doesn't see your identity. This is a meaningfully stronger privacy story than using ChatGPT or Gemini directly.

No — Leo is built into the Brave browser itself, not available as a standalone app or website. If you want to try it, you need to install Brave (which is free, Chromium-based, and works on all major platforms) and Leo will appear as a sidebar feature automatically. For users who don't want to switch browsers, Claude.ai or ChatGPT offer similar functionality in a regular web interface.

Leo Premium at $14.99/month gives you Claude Sonnet access inside the Brave browser with Brave's privacy protections. Claude Pro at $20/month gives you full Claude.ai access including Projects, Artifacts, and the latest Claude Opus model. For Brave users focused on privacy and casual Claude access, Leo Premium is cheaper. For heavy Claude users who need Projects and Opus, Claude Pro is still the stronger value.

Yes — one of Leo's best features is that it can read the current tab's content and answer questions about it. Select 'Summarize this page,' 'Translate this article,' or ask a specific question, and Leo responds based on the actual content you're viewing. This is faster than copy-pasting into a separate chatbot and works especially well for research and translation workflows.