@modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search

Anthropic's official reference MCP server for web search via the Brave Search API. Gives agents real-time web search results without sending queries to Google.

Evaluated Mar 06, 2026 (0d ago) vcurrent

Homepage ↗ Repo ↗ Search search brave web-search mcp anthropic official privacy

⚙ Agent Friendliness

/ 100

Can an agent use this?

🔒 Security

/ 100

Is it safe for agents?

⚡ Reliability

/ 100

Does it work consistently?

Score Breakdown

⚙ Agent Friendliness

MCP Quality

Documentation

Error Messages

Auth Simplicity

Rate Limits

🔒 Security

TLS Enforcement

100

Auth Strength

Scope Granularity

Dep. Hygiene

Secret Handling

API key via env var (not hardcoded). Brave does not log queries (privacy-by-design). HTTPS enforced for all API calls.

⚡ Reliability

Uptime/SLA

Version Stability

Breaking Changes

Error Recovery

Best When

You want web search in your agent without Google dependency. Brave Search API is fast, has a generous free tier (2,000 queries/month), and the MCP implementation is clean.

Avoid When

You need deep Google index coverage or Google-specific features (Knowledge Graph, Google Shopping, etc.).

Use Cases

• Real-time web search for facts, news, and current events in agent workflows
• Privacy-preserving search (Brave does not track queries like Google)
• Fetching local business results and maps data via Brave local search
• News search for recent developments agents weren't trained on
• Image and video search when agents need multimedia results

Not For

• Google-indexed content that Brave may not have crawled (niche sites)
• Agents needing Google's Knowledge Graph structured data
• High-volume search (Brave API has rate limits on free tier)

Interface

REST API

GraphQL

gRPC

MCP Server

Yes ↗

SDK

Webhooks

Authentication

Methods: api_key

OAuth: No Scopes: No

Brave Search API key required. Set via BRAVE_API_KEY environment variable. Free tier: 2,000 queries/month. Get key at brave.com/search/api.

Pricing

Model: freemium

Free tier: Yes

Requires CC: No

MCP server is MIT licensed/free. Brave Search API has a generous free tier (2K queries/month). Paid usage at $3/1K queries.

Agent Metadata

Pagination

offset

Idempotent

Full

Retry Guidance

Not documented

Known Gotchas

⚠ Free tier is 2,000 queries/month — agents that search frequently will hit this quickly
⚠ Rate limit is 1 query/second on free tier — rapid successive searches get throttled
⚠ Brave index may lag on very recent content (hours-old news may not appear)
⚠ Local search (businesses, maps) returns different fields than web search — handle both schemas
⚠ Results don't include page content — agents often need to follow up with a fetch call

Alternatives

brave-search-api serper-api tavily-search-api exa-api google-search-api

Full Evaluation Report

Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for @modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search.

$99

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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.