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Search and Retrieval APIs

Brave Search API

An independent search index exposed as APIs for web, news, images, video, places, and LLM-ready context for agent grounding.

Official siteDocumentation
freemiumChecked 2026-10-07Source verified

Quick decision

Best for
Agents that want an independent search index, not a resold one Retrieval pipelines that use LLM Context to ground answers Local and place lookups alongside general web search
Not ideal for
Fetching and cleaning arbitrary URLs (that is a reader tool job) Deep research synthesis you do not want to write yourself
Pricing model
Free plan plus paid Search and Answers plans; keys are managed in the Brave Search API developer dashboard.
Deployment
cloud. API.
Authentication
api_key
Review state
Source verified. Facts checked 2026-10-07. Not locally tested by AgentsUse.

What it does

The Brave Search API gives agents access to Brave independent search index through a set of focused endpoints: web, news, image, and video search, local and place search, and an LLM Context endpoint that supplies extracted page content for grounding. Brave positions the API for chatbots, agents, and retrieval pipelines that want owned-index results rather than a wrapper over someone else engine.

Two plans frame the product: Search, the real-time search data agents need to generate answers, and Answers, summarized completed answers grounded on one or more searches. A free plan makes evaluation cheap, and Brave publishes an official MCP server (brave-search-mcp-server) exposing the same tools over STDIO or HTTP with your API key.

What Brave does not do is fetch arbitrary URLs as clean markdown or run browsers. If your agent already knows the URL, pair Brave with a reader or extraction tool; use Brave to decide what is worth reading.

Verified capabilities

Core capability

  • Web search Source verified

    Comprehensive web searches with rich result types and advanced filtering, over Brave independent index.

  • LLM Context endpoint Source verified

    Retrieves pre-extracted web content optimized for AI agents, LLM grounding, and RAG pipelines, with token and snippet budgets.

  • News, image, and video search Source verified

    Dedicated endpoints for current news with freshness controls, images with metadata, and videos with metadata and thumbnails.

  • Local and place search Source verified

    Search for local businesses and points of interest with structured place data like address, hours, contact info, and ratings.

  • Summarizer Source verified

    Generates AI-powered summaries from web search results using the summary key returned by a search.

  • Official MCP server Source verified

    The brave-search-mcp-server supports STDIO and HTTP transports and exposes the search tools to MCP clients with a BRAVE_API_KEY.

Quick start

One web search call

API keys come from the Brave Search API developer dashboard.

One web search call
curl -s "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search?q=agent+tool+calling" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: YOUR_API_KEY"

Source: https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/app/documentation. Examples use placeholders only. Never paste a real key into a profile, config file you share, or a ticket.

MCP support: Official brave-search-mcp-server with STDIO (default) or HTTP transport, configured with BRAVE_API_KEY.

Works with

Frameworks

Any framework that can call an HTTP API or MCP server

SDKs and packages

REST API, MCP server

Works with

MCP clients

Only sourced support is listed. A missing framework means AgentsUse has not verified it yet, not that it cannot work.

Health and maintenance

License
freemium
Maintainer
Brave

Closed hosted API; endpoint and plan facts read from the official Brave Search docs landing page and the brave-search-mcp-server README on 2026-10-07.

Pricing and license

Free plan plus paid Search and Answers plans; keys are managed in the Brave Search API developer dashboard.

Official pricing or docs →

Limitations and safety

  • Discovery only: pair with a fetch or extraction tool to read chosen pages.
  • Some result enrichments, like extra snippets and full local search, require Pro-level plans.
Safety

Browser and data tools can read pages, fill forms, and download files. Start with a test account or read-only access, keep credentials in environment variables, and review agent actions before connecting anything that can spend money, send messages, or delete data.

Alternatives to Brave Search API

Tavily

Search plus extract, crawl, map, and research in one API and MCP server

Tradeoff: Its profile lists its own limits, pricing, and verification details for a side-by-side read.

Exa

Search modes tuned from instant retrieval to deep synthesis with structured output

Tradeoff: Its profile lists its own limits, pricing, and verification details for a side-by-side read.

Firecrawl

When the job is fetching and cleaning pages, with search secondary

Tradeoff: Its profile lists its own limits, pricing, and verification details for a side-by-side read.

Common questions

What does Brave Search API do for an AI agent?

An independent search index exposed as APIs for web, news, images, video, places, and LLM-ready context for agent grounding.

Is Brave Search API open source?

This profile records the pricing model as freemium. See the pricing section for the sourced summary.

Does Brave Search API support MCP?

Official brave-search-mcp-server with STDIO (default) or HTTP transport, configured with BRAVE_API_KEY.

Sources and freshness

Last checked 2026-10-07. Verification label: source verified, which means public claims trace to the sources above. It does not mean AgentsUse ran the tool. Spotted an error? Send a correction. Back to the tools directory.