# Brave Search — MCP Server

> Give an AI agent live web and local search via the Brave Search API.

**Source:** https://mcpplaygroundonline.com/mcp-servers/brave-search  
**Transport:** stdio  
**Requires auth:** Yes

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## What it does

The Brave Search MCP server wraps the Brave Search API as two MCP tools. Models can run a general web search with pagination and freshness filters, or a local search for businesses and places with addresses, ratings and hours (falling back to web results when no local match is found). It runs as a Node.js stdio process — `npx @modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search` — configured with a single BRAVE_API_KEY. Brave offers a free API tier, so it is a low-friction way to give any agent current, citeable web results instead of relying on the model's training cutoff.

## Tools exposed

- brave_web_search — run a general web search with pagination and freshness controls
- brave_local_search — search for local businesses and places, with web fallback

## Example queries you can run

- "Search the web for the latest Model Context Protocol spec changes in 2026 and summarise what's new."
- "Find three recent articles comparing vector databases and list their key claims with links."
- "Do a local search for well-reviewed coffee shops near King's Cross, London and rank them by rating."
- "What are people saying this week about the new GPT-5.6 models? Cite your sources."

## Details

- **Recommended model:** anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5 — Claude Sonnet 4.5 chains searches, follows links and synthesises cited answers well. Drop to Haiku 4.5 for single-shot lookups to keep costs low.
- **Transport:** stdio
- **Authentication:** Required — A single Brave Search API key (BRAVE_API_KEY). Grab one free at brave.com/search/api, or deploy a sandboxed hosted instance from the MCP Playground catalog and paste the key at deploy time.
- **Official source:** [modelcontextprotocol/servers — brave-search](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers/tree/main/src/brave-search)

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the Brave Search MCP server?

It is an open-source MCP server from the official Model Context Protocol servers project that lets AI models search the web through the Brave Search API. You give it a Brave API key and it exposes brave_web_search and brave_local_search tools to any MCP-compatible client.

### Which tools does the Brave Search MCP server expose?

Two tools: brave_web_search for general web queries with pagination and freshness filters, and brave_local_search for businesses and places (addresses, ratings, hours), which falls back to web results when there is no local match.

### Do I need a paid Brave Search API plan?

No. Brave offers a free Search API tier that is enough to evaluate and run light workloads. You only need a paid plan for higher query volumes; the MCP server works the same either way.

### How is Brave Search different from a Perplexity or Tavily MCP server?

Brave returns raw ranked search results (links, snippets, local listings) and lets the model do the reading and synthesis. Perplexity returns a finished, cited answer, and Tavily is tuned for extraction and crawling. Many agents use Brave for breadth and Perplexity or Tavily for depth.

### How do I test a Brave Search MCP server in the browser?

Open MCP Agent Studio, deploy the hosted Brave Search server from the catalog (or connect your own), paste your Brave API key, pick a model and start chatting. You can watch each brave_web_search call and its results live without any local setup.

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_Test this server across 40+ models on MCP Playground: https://mcpplaygroundonline.com/mcp-servers/brave-search — free, no install._