Best Extensions for Brave Browser? 6 TESTED Picks (2026)

Key takeaways

• Skip ad blockers on Brave because Shields already blocks ads and trackers at the browser level with no extension process
• Install extensions only for real gaps where timed tab suspension, workspaces, and session recovery top the list
• Every pick below is live on the Chrome Web Store and installs in Brave with one click, verified June 2026

Brave runs Chrome Web Store extensions, and most “best extensions” lists waste your first install on an ad blocker Brave does not need: Shields blocks ads and trackers natively. The real gaps, verified on the Chrome Web Store in June 2026, are timed tab suspension, workspaces, per-site dark mode, password management, and session recovery. Six picks cover them.

The 6 Picks and the Gap Each One Fills in Brave

Installation works exactly as on Chrome. Browse the Chrome Web Store in Brave and the install button reads “Add to Brave” — Brave’s documentation confirms Manifest V3 extensions run identically to Chrome.

What Brave Already Covers, So You Can Skip It

Three categories dominate generic extension lists, and Brave ships all three natively.

Ad and tracker blocking. Shields intercepts ads, trackers, and third-party cookies at the network layer before content loads, in Standard or Aggressive mode, with per-site toggles. There is no extension process behind it. Adding an ad blocker on top mostly re-checks requests Shields already dropped. Brave has even committed to keeping select Manifest V2 blockers such as uBlock Origin installable after Chrome removed them — context in Does uBlock Origin Still Work in Chrome? — but on Brave that is belt-and-suspenders, not a necessity.

Vertical tabs. Native since Brave 1.52 in May 2023, three years before this article. Right-click any tab or visit brave://settings/appearance to enable. You get a collapsible left-side tab strip with pinning and tab groups.

Basic memory saving. Brave’s Memory Saver (Settings > System > Performance) deactivates unused tabs and reloads them on click, with a manual exception list for sites that must stay live. Combined with Shields stripping ad weight from every page, this is why Brave’s baseline RAM use beats stock Chrome. The structural breakdown is in Brave vs Chrome RAM: What Actually Drives the Gap.

What the native trio lacks is depth. The strip has no workspaces. Memory Saver has no timer you can set and no awareness of which web apps break when discarded. The picks below fill those gaps.

SuperchargePerformance: Suspension Control Brave’s Memory Saver Lacks

Brave decides for itself when an idle tab gets deactivated, and its only safeguard is the exception list you fill in by hand. SuperchargePerformance (v1.4.2, free core) uses the same Chromium discard mechanism, chrome.tabs.discard(), and wraps it in the control layer Brave leaves out:

• Suspension timers you choose. 15 minutes or 5 minutes of inactivity on the free tier; the PRO tier, waitlist-only for now, unlocks custom values down to seconds.
• Multi-signal protection. Tabs playing audio, pinned tabs, and tabs with unsaved form input are never discarded. 25+ web apps are auto-protected out of the box: Figma, Notion, Slack, Google Docs, Discord, Zoom, WhatsApp Web, and others where a discard would drop a call or kill a queue.
• A RAM dashboard. The popup shows the total estimated memory freed by suspensions and per-page optimizations, so you can see the feature working instead of trusting it.
• Per-domain whitelist, plus 13 individually toggleable features.

One setup note for Brave specifically: SuperchargePerformance also ships network-level ad blocking (186K+ rules from 22 curated sources) plus dedicated YouTube and Twitch video-ad layers and automatic cookie-consent rejection via DuckDuckGo’s AutoConsent rules. Shields already handles general ad blocking, so set the content-blocking tier to Off or Low and let the extension do what Brave cannot: suspension control. It stores everything locally with zero telemetry and no account.

If you want to compare the category first, the tab suspender field test covers the alternatives, and the Great Suspender’s removal for malware explains why the old default pick is gone.

SuperchargeNavigation: Workspaces on Top of Brave’s Vertical Tabs

Brave’s vertical tabs relocate the strip. SuperchargeNavigation (v1.3.0, free, no paid tier) organizes it. The side panel hosts a workspace switcher, the full tab list, and a multi-select toolbar for bulk pin, mute, group, and close actions. Around that core:

• Named workspaces with full isolation. Client work, research, and personal tabs live in separate named sets that survive restarts. Brave has nothing equivalent.
• Alt+K command bar searching open tabs, bookmarks, and recent history from the keyboard.
• 50 automatic session snapshots taken every 5 minutes, with a slider to rewind to any of them. A crashed window or an accidental “close all” stops being a catastrophe.
• Alt+Click peek to preview a link in an overlay without leaving the page.

Everything lives in your browser profile with zero telemetry; cross-device workspace sync rides the browser’s own sync framework, with an off switch in settings if you want strictly local. It runs in the Chromium side panel, which Brave inherits, so it coexists with Brave’s native vertical tab strip rather than fighting it. Use Brave’s strip for the visual tab list, the workspaces for project separation.

Dark Reader and Video Speed Controller: Page-Level Control

Brave’s dark theme styles the browser frame, not the websites inside it. Dark Reader (v4.9.125, ~7M users) generates dark mode for page content itself, with per-site brightness, contrast, and sepia controls plus a per-site off switch for sites that ship a good native dark mode. It is open source and has held the top spot in this category for years.

Video Speed Controller (v0.10.2, ~3M users) adds keyboard playback control to nearly any HTML5 video: tap a key to speed up, slow down, or rewind ten seconds. YouTube’s own menu stops at 2x unless you pay for Premium, and most lecture platforms bury or omit the setting. For coursework and conference talks this is the highest value-per-kilobyte pick on the list.

Bitwarden and Session Buddy: The Safety Nets

Bitwarden (v2026.5.1, ~6M users) is the open-source password manager. Brave’s built-in manager covers in-browser basics, and Brave Sync moves passwords between your Brave installs — but the vault stops at the browser’s edge. Bitwarden adds native apps for every desktop and mobile OS, secure sharing, and independently audited open-source code, with a free tier that covers unlimited passwords on unlimited devices.

Session Buddy (v4.1.2, ~1M users) saves and restores whole browsing sessions. It is reactive rather than organizational, with no workspaces and no grouping logic, which makes it the simplest possible insurance against a crash or an unwanted restart eating 40 tabs. If you install SuperchargeNavigation, its 5-minute snapshots cover this ground automatically; Session Buddy is the standalone pick if all you want is the safety net.

Which of the Six You Actually Need

Extension count matters more on a browser whose pitch is being lighter than Chrome. Every extension runs its own process, while Shields runs as a native browser layer with no process cost. The same asymmetry shapes which browser uses the least RAM. So pick by symptom instead of installing all six:

• If tabs pile up until Brave slows down → SuperchargePerformance, with content blocking set to Off so Shields keeps that job.
• If you juggle projects and already live in vertical tabs → SuperchargeNavigation for workspaces and snapshots.
• If you read at night → Dark Reader.
• If passwords live on a sticky note or only inside Brave → Bitwarden.
• If you watch lectures or talks → Video Speed Controller.
• If you only fear the crash, nothing else → Session Buddy.

Skip anything that duplicates Shields. Brave gave you the ad blocker; spend your extension budget on what it left out.