How To Install Brave Browser on Ubuntu 26.04 / 24.04

Brave ships an official install script now, and it is the shortest path to the browser on an Ubuntu desktop: one command adds the signed apt repository and installs the stable build. That changes what it takes to install Brave Browser on Ubuntu compared to the era of hand-copying GPG keys into a .list file.

Original content from computingforgeeks.com - post 45896

This guide covers the script route, the manual apt repository setup for anyone who wants to see each step before trusting it, the Beta and Nightly channels, and a removal that does not leave profile data behind. Brave distributes its repository definition in the deb822 format these days, and the script even deletes the legacy .list entry older setups left on disk. Everything below was run on Ubuntu 26.04 and 24.04 in August 2026, with Brave at 1.93.136 stable.

Install Brave Browser with the Official Script

The whole install is one command. It needs curl and a user with sudo rights, nothing else:

curl -fsS https://dl.brave.com/install.sh | sh

The script identifies your package manager, prints every command it is about to run, and closes with a confirmation:

Installing Brave Browser (release)
...
Installation complete! Start Brave Browser by typing: brave-browser

Confirm the installed build from the terminal:

brave-browser --version

The version string prints on a single line:

Brave Browser 151.1.93.136

What the script actually does

Piping a URL into sh deserves a look under the covers, so here is the exact trace the script printed on our Ubuntu test machine:

+ curl -fsS https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg
+ install -DTm644 /dev/stdin /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg
+ curl -fsS https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser.sources
+ install -DTm644 /dev/stdin /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.sources
+ rm -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list
+ apt-get update
+ apt-get install -y brave-browser

Four things worth knowing from that trace. It downloads Brave’s archive keyring and a deb822 .sources file from Brave’s own repository host, and apt verifies the repository metadata against that key on every update. It deletes any leftover brave-browser-*.list entries (the trace shows the expanded filename because our test machine had one), so if you set up Brave years ago with the old echo-into-a-list-file method, running the script once migrates you cleanly. The install pulls in a brave-keyring package that owns the repository keys for all three release channels, which keeps key rotation in apt’s hands instead of yours. And the script itself is maintained on GitHub, adapted from Tailscale’s installer, with the same flow working on dnf, pacman, zypper, and rpm-ostree systems.

Add the Brave APT Repository Manually

The manual setup produces the same end state in three commands, per Brave’s Linux documentation. Ubuntu Desktop ships curl, but minimal and Server images do not, so install it first:

sudo apt install curl

Download the keyring:

sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg

Then pull the repository definition into apt’s sources directory:

sudo curl -fsSLo /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.sources https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser.sources

You can inspect what landed before refreshing anything:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.sources

It is a plain deb822 stanza pointing at the stable suite and referencing the keyring you just installed:

Types: deb
URIs: https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com
Suites: stable
Components: main
Architectures: amd64 arm64
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg

Refresh the package index:

sudo apt update

The Brave repository shows up in the fetch list:

Get:1 https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com stable InRelease [7547 B]
Get:2 https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com stable/main arm64 Packages [35.5 kB]
Get:3 https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com stable/main amd64 Packages [35.6 kB]

Install the browser:

sudo apt install brave-browser

Budget for the size. The package is a 144 MB download that unpacks to roughly 470 MB under /opt/brave.com, in line with every other Chromium-based browser. If you prefer a leaner Chromium base without Brave’s bundled features, the plain Chromium install is the lighter route.

Install Brave Beta or Nightly

Each channel is a separate package from a separate repository, so Beta and Nightly install alongside stable rather than replacing it. The script takes the channel as an environment variable:

curl -fsS https://dl.brave.com/install.sh | CHANNEL=beta sh

The manual equivalent swaps the release URLs for the beta ones and installs the suffixed package:

sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-beta-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-beta.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-beta-archive-keyring.gpg
sudo curl -fsSLo /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-beta.sources https://brave-browser-apt-beta.s3.brave.com/brave-browser.sources
sudo apt update && sudo apt install brave-browser-beta

With both channels installed, each binary reports its own version:

brave-browser --version
brave-browser-beta --version

Our test box ran both at once without conflict, each with its own profile directory:

Brave Browser 151.1.93.136
Brave Browser Beta 151.1.94.109 beta

Nightly follows the same pattern with CHANNEL=nightly. Here is how the three channels compared on our lab machine in August 2026:

Channel	Package	Sources file	Version in this lab
Stable	brave-browser	brave-browser-release.sources	1.93.136
Beta	brave-browser-beta	brave-browser-beta.sources	1.94.109
Nightly	brave-browser-nightly	brave-browser-nightly.sources	1.95.62

Launch Brave Browser on Ubuntu

Search for Brave in the Activities overview, or start it from the terminal:

brave-browser

The first run opens a short welcome flow where Brave offers to become the default browser and import data from an existing one. Skip works fine; every choice is reversible in settings later.

Typing brave://version in the address bar shows the full build details, the Chromium base it tracks, and the profile path, which lives at ~/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default:

Brave is one option among several good ones on this desktop. The Zen Browser setup covers a Firefox-based alternative with a similar privacy pitch, and the Tor Browser install is the stronger tool when anonymity matters more than convenience.

Update and Remove Brave

Updates ride the normal apt flow. Because the repository definition and keys belong to the brave-keyring package, Brave keeps its own repo config healthy across key rotations:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Removal takes the browser and the keyring package together, then clears the repository files. If you installed Beta or Nightly, add brave-browser-beta or brave-browser-nightly to the purge line, since the file cleanup below removes their repositories too:

sudo apt purge brave-browser brave-keyring
sudo rm -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-*.sources /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser*-archive-keyring.gpg
sudo apt update

One thing apt will not touch is your profile. After a single short session, ours already held 101 MB of cache and state, and purge leaves all of it in place. Remove it separately if you are done with Brave for good:

rm -rf ~/.config/BraveSoftware

When the Install Script Fails

Error: “curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 429”

The download host dl.brave.com sits behind a CDN that rate limits repeated fetches from one address. We hit this live while testing on a second machine behind the same public IP. You can confirm it is throttling and not a broken mirror:

curl -sI https://dl.brave.com/install.sh | head -1

A throttled response returns the 429 status instead of 200:

HTTP/2 429

The limit cleared in under two minutes in our case. Retry after a short wait, or skip the script entirely: the manual repository commands above talk to a different endpoint and were never throttled in our testing.

That was the only failure across both Ubuntu releases we tested. If you are still weighing which browser deserves the default slot, our browser round-up for Linux puts Brave next to its rivals, and Fedora users get the same channels through dnf in the Install Brave Browser on Fedora guide.