Best for
- AI agents that need Brave Search API data
- Workflows requiring web, news, or multimedia search
- Applications needing structured place and local-business information
B
Brave Search MCP Server
Official
Comprehensive Brave Search capabilities through MCP
GitHub source repository ↗
59FMRS · C
This is an official Brave-maintained search MCP Server covering web, news, image, video, local, place, LLM-context, and summarization tools. It requires a Brave Search API key and defaults to STDIO; HTTP deployments require careful handling because the endpoint is unauthenticated.
Brave Search MCP Server integrates the Brave Search API with MCP, offering web, local business, place, image, video, and news search, plus AI-oriented web context and summarization. STDIO is the default transport, and HTTP is also supported.
Tools
brave_web_search
Performs web searches with rich result types and advanced filtering options.
brave_local_search
Searches local businesses and places, returning ratings, hours, and AI-generated descriptions.
brave_video_search
Searches videos and returns metadata and thumbnail information.
brave_image_search
Searches images and returns metadata such as URLs, dimensions, and confidence scores.
brave_news_search
Searches news articles with freshness controls and breaking-news indicators.
brave_summarizer
Generates AI-powered summaries from web search results through Brave's summarization API.
brave_place_search
Searches points of interest by geographic area and returns structured data including addresses, hours, contact details, ratings, photos, categories, and time zones.
brave_llm_context
Retrieves pre-extracted web content optimized for AI agents, LLM grounding, and RAG pipelines.
Setup
Create a Brave Search API account and generate an API key. For npm installation, add the example configuration to Claude Desktop or VS Code and set BRAVE_API_KEY. The server defaults to STDIO; to use HTTP, set BRAVE_MCP_TRANSPORT=http or pass --transport http.
claude_desktop_config.json
{"mcpServers":{"brave-search":{"command":"npx","args":["-y","@brave/brave-search-mcp-server","--transport","stdio"],"env":{"BRAVE_API_KEY":"YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"}}}}
Fit and risk
Not for
- Offline workflows that do not need an external search service
- Environments unable to provide a Brave Search API key
- Users needing full local-search capabilities without a Pro plan
Required permissions
- Requires a valid BRAVE_API_KEY, or a key file specified through BRAVE_API_KEY_FILE
- Requires network access to the Brave Search API
- In HTTP mode, host binding and port are controlled by configuration
Risks and side effects
- The API key is a required secret and should not be exposed in logs or shared configurations
- The HTTP endpoint is unauthenticated; use extra care when binding beyond loopback
- Full local-search capabilities and some additional snippet features require a Pro plan
- Search results and AI summaries depend on an external service and may require verification
Troubleshooting
- Verify that BRAVE_API_KEY is set, or that BRAVE_API_KEY_FILE points to a key file available inside the container or runtime
- Check the npm package version, Node.js 22.x or later, and build completion
- Confirm the client configuration uses the correct npm package identifier and STDIO arguments
- For HTTP mode, check BRAVE_MCP_TRANSPORT, BRAVE_MCP_HOST, BRAVE_MCP_PORT, and allowed Origin or Host settings
- Before using brave_summarizer, run brave_web_search with summary=true and provide the returned summary key
Use cases
Retrieve web information and structured search results
Search news, images, videos, local businesses, and places
Provide web context for AI agents or RAG pipelines
Run a web search with summary=true and then generate an AI summary
Supported clients
Claude DesktopFull support
VS CodeFull support