Straight answers.

No — but the source is public, and those are two different things worth separating.

The repository at github.com/bnfy/blanc contains the application source. You can read every line, inspect what the blocker does and what the launch ping sends, and build and run the checked-out source locally. A local build shows what that source does; it does not prove that a published binary matches it byte for byte.

The code is not openly licensed. package.json says UNLICENSED, so it carries no open-source grant. GitHub’s terms permit users to fork public repositories within the service, but Blanc grants no licence to modify the code, redistribute it, or publish your own builds. The accurate term is source-available, not open source.

Published macOS releases are signed and notarized, and published Windows releases carry a timestamped Authenticode signature checked at release time. The checksum manifest is signed with Sigstore under a verified OIDC identity, while Windows and Linux CI artifacts carry GitHub provenance attestations. Those records authenticate published artifacts; they do not make a local build reproducible.

Blanc is Chromium-based, and yes, that means it uses Electron. The memory assumption is the part worth measuring rather than assuming.

Blanc includes a published benchmark harness and its raw runs. It sums phys_footprint across each browser’s whole process tree rather than summing RSS, which counts the engine framework once per renderer and systematically penalizes whichever engine isolates more per site.

Two qualifications travel with the figures: Brave is the fair peer because it also blocks by default, and the gap is not only blocking — with Blanc Blocker switched off, Blanc still came in under Chrome.

Packaged builds send one launch ping, and you can turn it off. Its six fields are a random install ID, a session ID, app version, platform, architecture, and OS version coarsened to a major number. It contains no page, URL, search, or history data, and it is not joined to other Blanc data.

On a fresh profile, the choice is presented during first-run setup and must be saved before a ping can be sent. The server HMACs the install ID before storage, applies replay deduplication and rate caps, and retains only expiring seen-markers plus aggregate counts.

The install ID lives in a device-local file and is never synced. Profile Sync never carries it.

Blanc Patron is $30 a year or $4 a month, and it is optional. Everything that makes Blanc a browser is free: ad and tracker blocking, encrypted sync, private tabs, tab groups, quiet tabs, and passkeys.

On macOS, Patron unlocks three extra Dock colorways. On every platform, it adds the ability to save a window as a named workspace. Creating a named workspace requires an active Patron subscription. Renaming and removing existing workspaces continue to work if it lapses, so your own data is never held hostage.

Patron exists because Blanc has no ad business and no investors, and an independent browser needs a way to pay for itself that is not selling the people using it. Nothing that was free has moved behind payment.

It is deliberate, not a roadmap gap. Blanc previously included an extension runtime, but it caused native crashes, required an unsandboxed chrome window, and imposed a licensing constraint on the project.

The feature most people want extensions for is blocking, and that is built into Blanc at the network layer instead — below the extension system and outside Manifest V3’s rule caps.

Bananify, an independent software studio. Blanc is built without venture funding or investors setting the product agenda.