Brave Leo: A deep dive into the browser AI assistant

It seems like every app and tool is getting an AI assistant baked into it these days, and web browsers are no exception. We’ve seen it with Microsoft Copilot and Arc Max, and now the privacy-first browser, Brave, has thrown its hat in the ring with Brave Leo. The promise is simple: make browsing smarter and more interactive without compromising the privacy Brave is known for.

So, what’s the real story with Brave Leo? In this guide, we’ll break down exactly what it is, what it can do, and how its privacy model works. We'll also get into the pricing and, most importantly, talk about where it shines and where it hits a wall, especially if you’re thinking about using it for business.

What is Brave Leo?

At its heart, Brave Leo is an AI chat assistant built right into the Brave browser. It’s available on desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux) and mobile (Android, iOS), acting as a handy sidekick that can help you with different tasks without you ever having to switch tabs.

Think of it this way, you can ask Leo to:

• Give you the short version of a long article, webpage, or even a YouTube video.

• Answer questions about the page you’re on or pretty much anything else.

• Draft new content for you, like emails, blog posts, or social media updates.

• Translate text from one language to another.

• Help out with coding questions and whip up some sample code.

One of its biggest draws is the focus on privacy. The free version of Brave Leo doesn’t even ask you to create an account, which is part of Brave's effort to keep your conversations anonymous and your data yours.

Key features and capabilities of Brave Leo

Brave Leo is all about convenience. It puts AI tools right where you need them, saving you the hassle of jumping over to another app or website just to get a quick answer or summary.

Understanding the page you're on

One of Leo’s neatest tricks is its ability to grasp the context of whatever you’re looking at. You can pop open Leo in the sidebar and ask it to summarize a dense report, find the key takeaways from a PDF, or even give you a rundown of a Google Doc. It can also suggest follow-up questions to help you dig deeper, which is pretty useful for research or just learning something new.

Choosing your AI model

Brave doesn't lock you into a single AI. It lets you choose from different large language models (LLMs), like Mixtral 8x7B, Claude Haiku, and Llama 3.1 8B. If you pay for the premium version, you get access to even more powerful models like Claude Sonnet 4.

For the more technically inclined, Leo has a "Bring Your Own Model" (BYOM) feature. This lets you connect Leo to a model running on your own computer (using something like Ollama) or hook it up to an API from a service like OpenAI.

Getting up-to-date information

We’ve all seen AIs give answers that are confidently wrong because their knowledge is a year out of date. To get around this, Brave Leo is hooked into the Brave Search API. This means it can pull real-time info for questions about current events or anything else where fresh data matters. When it uses search results, it includes citations, so you can check the sources for yourself.

This is great for general knowledge, but it has its limits in a business setting. A customer support AI can't just search the public web; it needs to check an order status in Shopify or pull up a customer's ticket history in Zendesk. That’s where a purpose-built tool like eesel AI comes in, with integrations that let it perform live lookups in the apps your business actually uses.

Brave Leo's approach to privacy and security

Privacy isn't just a feature for Brave; it's their whole identity. Leo was built from the ground up with that in mind, and it includes a few key measures that make it stand out from the crowd.

Here’s how they handle your privacy:

• No account needed: For the free version, you just open it and go. No login, no sign-up.

• Anonymous requests: Your queries are sent through a proxy server that strips away identifying info like your IP address. Your questions become anonymous before they even reach the AI model.

• Conversations aren't stored: Brave says they don't keep your conversations on their servers or use them to train their models.

• Local history: Your chat history lives on your device, and you can delete it whenever you want.

• Unlinkable premium access: If you upgrade, Brave uses a special token system to confirm your subscription, so your payment info is never tied to how you use Leo.

For personal use, this privacy setup is fantastic. You can play around with AI without feeling like you're feeding your personal data into a giant machine.

Why business privacy is a different beast

When a business talks about privacy, it's a bit different. It’s not so much about making an employee anonymous; it's about controlling company data. The real worry isn't someone's IP address, but making sure the AI is only trained on approved company knowledge and won't ever share sensitive info with the wrong person.

A general tool like Brave Leo can't be told to only answer questions using information from your internal Confluence or Zendesk help center. There's always a chance it might pull a generic answer from the web, which could be unhelpful or even wrong for your specific situation.

This is a problem that specialized platforms are built to solve. For example, eesel AI allows you to build AI agents that are "scoped" to your specific knowledge sources. You can connect it to your helpdesk, internal wikis, and past support conversations, ensuring its answers are always secure, on-brand, and based entirely on your company’s information.

Brave Leo pricing and plans

Brave keeps the pricing for Leo pretty simple with just two tiers.

Brave Leo (free)

The free version is open to every Brave user. It gives you access to solid models like Llama 3.1, which is more than enough for day-to-day things like summarizing articles or asking quick questions. You might run into usage limits during peak times, but for casual use, it’s great.

Brave Leo premium

If you find yourself using Leo a lot, the Premium plan is $14.99 per month. For that, you get:

• Access to more powerful models, like Claude Sonnet 4.

• Higher usage limits, so you can have more conversations.

• Quicker response times.

• One subscription works on up to five of your devices.

This pay-per-user model is pretty standard for consumer software. But for a support team, costs can get out of hand quickly. A lot of business AI tools charge per resolution, which can lead to some eye-watering bills in busy months. In contrast, platforms like eesel AI have predictable pricing based on the features you need and your overall volume, so you don't get hit with surprise fees.

The verdict: Is Brave Leo right for you?

For an individual, especially one who already uses and loves the Brave browser, Brave Leo is a fantastic and convenient AI assistant. If you want a quick way to summarize things, draft some text, or get answers without creating yet another account, it’s a solid choice.

But when you try to apply it to a business setting like customer or internal support, you start to see the gaps. It's missing the key things that teams really need:

• Direct integrations: It can’t connect to a help desk like Zendesk or Freshdesk to read old tickets or perform actions.

• Training on your knowledge: You can't train it exclusively on your team’s documents from places like Confluence, Google Docs, or your past support chats.

• Automating workflows: It can’t do business-specific tasks like escalating a ticket, adding a tag, or looking up customer details through an API.

• A safe place to test: There's no simulation mode to see how the AI would perform on your past tickets before you let it talk to actual customers.

For those kinds of jobs, a general assistant just doesn't cut it. Here’s a quick comparison to make it clear.

Moving from a general assistant to a specialized support agent

Brave Leo is a well-made AI assistant that does a great job of bringing AI into the browser without sacrificing user privacy. For personal productivity, it’s a great tool and a sign of where browser tech is going.

But when your goal is to power a customer support team or an internal help desk, you need more than a generalist, you need a specialist. Business teams need a tool that plugs into their workflows, learns from their private knowledge, and can be trusted to give customers safe and accurate answers.

If you're ready to go beyond a basic browser assistant and build an AI that actually understands your business, it's time to check out a purpose-built platform. You can see how eesel AI works in minutes and even simulate its performance on your own data without any risk.