Personally I love looking at vivaldi's start page, because as I think you already knew before posting, its completely customizable.
The ad i saw on brave was literally part of the background and not something like a tile you could remove.
My larger point is that brave has been going down hill with their attempts to make money, first it's a VPN, then ads from tubo tax, now they're shoving an AI into it. Vivaldi on the other hand has been constantly improving.
Vivaldi