Brave saved massive monthly costs and reclaimed valuable time, powered by North.Cloud

Interview with Mihai Plesa, VP of DevOps

Before using North.Cloud, managing cloud costs at Brave was a cumbersome and resource-intensive task. With limited visibility and flexibility, Brave’s team spent significant time manually optimizing their AWS workloads, diverting attention from critical business growth initiatives.

"We moved away from manually re-architecting and doing cleanup or low-hanging cost-saving initiatives, focusing instead on high-impact actions recommended by North.Cloud."

Adopting North.Cloud’s automated solutions dramatically reduced Brave’s monthly cloud costs and streamlined their financial operations, allowing Brave’s engineers to redirect their focus entirely toward product innovation and user experience enhancements.

“Simply by avoiding long-term commitments, vendor lock-in, and by eliminating unused resources and waste, our balance sheet is healthier and supports optimal growth."

With North.Cloud’s automated approach, Brave’s team regained valuable time previously lost to manual cloud cost reviews. This enabled the company to concentrate fully on its core mission—delivering a secure, fast, and private browsing experience to millions of global users.

“With North.Cloud we get the savings coverage we want without being locked in for 3 years. It’s easy scaling up to optimize discounts and we feel safe having the option to scale down."

1. Lack of visibility into cloud spending 

“Prior to working with North.Cloud, we had a lack of visibility into cloud spend and lack of flexibility with coverage.”

Brave faced challenges with accurately tracking cloud spend, making cost optimization difficult. Without precise insights, managing their dynamic AWS compute workloads became inefficient and costly.

2. Manual optimization consumed valuable resources 

Brave’s engineering teams were investing significant effort into manual cost optimization, including re-architecting and basic cleanup initiatives. These tasks detracted from their ability to focus on core product enhancements and business-critical innovations.

They required a solution that provided actionable insights and could automate significant savings without ongoing manual oversight. 

This led Brave to North.Cloud.

After initially doing everything themselves and later trying some competitors, Brave conducted a proof of concept with North.Cloud. The demonstrated value was clear, and Brave fully migrated to North.Cloud and has been very satisfied with the results ever since.

Key North.Cloud features adopted by Brave included:

Automated real-time commitment management 

“The ability to do AWS Savings Plans in an elastic and high coverage manner was a gamechanger.”

Arctic,the only cloud cost optimizer that adjusts commitments in real-time, provided Brave instant access to deep discounts found in 3-year plans without rigid contracts. 

It dynamically adjusted commitments based on their usage, eliminating over-commitment risks and reducing manual procurement efforts.

Instant, intelligent cloud cost allocation 

North.Cloud’s FinOps tools eliminated the need for manual tagging and spreadsheets, offering Brave automated, reliable visibility into cloud spend. 

Brave could instantly filter and analyze costs by service, region, and usage type, streamlining cost management and forecasting processes.

AI-powered rightsizing without performance compromise 

Brave leveraged North.Cloud's Reshaping feature to intelligently analyze infrastructure usage and recommend optimally sized instances:

• AI-powered resize recommendations: Provided precise recommendations based on detailed historical usage, memory consumption, and traffic patterns, rather than relying solely on CPU metrics.
• Easy collaboration: Allowed Brave to instantly share optimization suggestions directly via Slack, Jira, or infrastructure teams, streamlining the decision-making process.
• Customizable optimization controls: Enabled Brave’s engineering team to finely tune recommendations by adjusting CPU thresholds, CPU headroom, and memory headroom according to their specific performance needs.

This holistic and intelligent approach empowered Brave to confidently reduce compute resources and costs, ensuring optimal performance and efficiency.

1. Monthly savings and reduced FinOps workload 

Brave experienced immediate and substantial cost savings, achieving a 49% compute effective savings rate and 100% savings utilization.

This freed significant budget resources and dramatically reduced the time spent managing cloud financial operations, enabling the team to refocus efforts on innovation and strategic initiatives.

2. Accelerated business growth and scalability 

Streamlined cost management empowered Brave to scale rapidly, aligning cloud strategies closely with dynamic growth objectives.

This financial flexibility supported Brave’s rapid growth to over 80 million monthly active users and a 22% year-over-year increase in daily active users. 

Additionally, the reclaimed resources allowed Brave’s development teams to rapidly roll out significant new features, including enhanced privacy protocols and improved browser speed and stability.

3. Enhanced financial clarity and confidence

“North.Cloud is not only for cost optimization but also for visibility, reporting, budgeting which are very valuable to CFOs, FinOps and other stakeholders.”

With North.Cloud, Brave's team gained precise, automated financial insights that empowered engineering and finance stakeholders to confidently align budgeting with business growth.

• Insights beyond cost savings: North.Cloud delivers deep insights—not just about Brave’s cloud spend, but also about broader industry trends and optimization strategies, directly influencing Brave’s cloud management approach.
• A true partnership: The North.Cloud team acts as an extension of Brave's internal team rather than just a vendor. Consistent communication, tailored monthly business reviews, and regular check-ins with North.Cloud’s CEO, Matt, provide personalized support and strategic guidance.
• ‍Strategic business enablement: By helping Brave eliminate long-term commitments, vendor lock-in, and resource waste, North.Cloud significantly improved Brave’s financial flexibility, enabling rapid and sustainable business growth.