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Brave Search MCP server

Web, news, image and video search over Brave's independent index, served as a hosted MCP endpoint.

Version:
hosted
Publisher:
Brave

Why you would use it

A search tool the agent can call without a browser, backed by an index that is not a rebrand of someone else's. Good default when a task starts with "find out".

Brave's search server exposes web search and local search as MCP tools. An agent asks a question, gets ranked results with titles and snippets, and decides which page to open next. No browser session, no scraping, and a rate limit you set with the key you bring.

Install

Generated from the server’s transport data — never hand-written. Placeholders in angle brackets are yours to fill.

Hosted — https://brave.run.tools

claude mcp add --transport http brave-search https://brave.run.tools --header 'braveApiKey: <braveApiKey>'

What it can do

As declared by the publisher

Tools · 8

  • brave_image_search

    Performs an image search using the Brave Search API. Helpful when you need pictures of people, places, things, graphic-design ideas, or art inspiration. Counts of up to 100 are supported.

  • brave_llm_context

    Retrieves pre-extracted, relevance-ranked web content using Brave's LLM Context API, optimized for AI agents, LLM grounding, and RAG pipelines. Unlike a traditional web search that returns links and short descriptions, this tool returns the actual substance of matching pages — text chunks, tables, code blocks, and structured data — so the model can reason over it directly. When relaying results in markdown-supporting environments, cite source URLs from the `sources` map.

  • brave_local_search

    Brave Local Search API returns enriched information (address, phone, hours, rating) for location-search results. Access requires the Brave Search API Pro plan; currently US-only. Two-step flow: first call `brave_web_search` with `result_filter=locations` to obtain `locations.results[].id`, then pass them here. NOTE: This tool takes location IDs from a prior web-search response; if you have a free-text query, call `brave_web_search` first.

  • brave_news_search

    Searches for news articles using Brave's News Search API. Use it when you need current news, breaking updates, or articles about specific topics.

  • brave_place_search

    Searches Brave's Place Search API. A single call may populate any combination of `results` (POIs), `cities`, `addresses`, `streets`, and `location` (the resolved search area), depending on the query shape. Use for POIs near coordinates or a named area, browsing general POIs (omit `query`, supply coords or `location`), disambiguating bare city names, resolving specific addresses, or looking up streets. Anchor via `latitude`+`longitude` or `location`; with neither, `query` is required.

  • brave_summarizer

    Retrieves AI-generated summaries of web search results. Two-step flow: first call `brave_web_search` with `summary=true` to obtain `summarizer.key`, then pass it here. Pro AI tier required.

  • brave_video_search

    Searches for videos using Brave's Video Search API. Returns structured video results with metadata.

  • brave_web_search

    Performs web searches using the Brave Search API and returns comprehensive search results with rich metadata. To chain into local-POI enrichment, pass `result_filter=locations` and feed the resulting `locations.results[].id` values into `brave_local_search`. To chain into the AI summarizer, pass `summary=true` and feed the returned `summarizer.key` into `brave_summarizer`.

Setup gotchas

  • The hosted endpoint takes a Brave Search API key as a request header; a free key covers a few thousand calls a month.
  • Results are ranked web pages, not answers — pair it with a fetch tool when the agent needs the page body.
Brave Search MCP server — setup for Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code · connect0