Brave Search MCP Server

Give your AI agent access to Brave's independent search engine. Web search, local business search, news, images, videos, and AI summaries with a generous free tier.

MCP Server·3 sections·1 min read

research

Install Prompt

Paste this into Claude Code to set it up:

I want to add the Brave Search MCP Server to my Claude Code setup.

IMPORTANT: Never use Read/Edit tools on ~/.claude.json. Use jq via Bash instead.

Prerequisites: You need a Brave Search API key. Sign up at brave.com/search/api for a free tier with 2,000 queries per month (no credit card required).

Run this command to add the MCP server (replace your-key with your actual API key):
```bash
jq '.mcpServers["brave-search"] = {"type": "stdio", "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@anthropic/brave-search-mcp"], "env": {"BRAVE_API_KEY": "your-key"}}' ~/.claude.json > /tmp/claude-json-tmp && mv /tmp/claude-json-tmp ~/.claude.json
```

You can also add this to ~/.claude/settings.json instead of ~/.claude.json if you prefer to keep MCP servers in the settings file.

After adding, restart Claude Code. The server connects immediately and gives your agent access to web search, local business search, news, images, and videos.

01What It Does

Raw search results your agent can process

Unlike Perplexity (which returns pre-digested, summarized answers), Brave Search returns structured results with titles, URLs, descriptions, and metadata. This gives your agent more control over how it processes and presents search information. It is a great complement to Perplexity or an alternative for quick lookups.

🌐

Web SearchGeneral purpose search with pagination and filtering. Returns titles, URLs, and descriptions for your agent to work with.

📍

Local SearchFind businesses, restaurants, and services near a location. Returns names, addresses, ratings, and contact info.

📰

News SearchSearch recent news articles with headlines, sources, and publication dates. Get a real time briefing without leaving your terminal.

02When to Use Brave vs Perplexity

Brave Search

Returns

Structured results: titles, URLs, snippets, metadata

Best for

Finding specific pages, exploring options, raw data for further processing

Agent control

Full control over how results are processed and presented

Extras

Local business search, image search, video search

Perplexity

Returns

Synthesized prose answers with citations

Best for

Complex questions that need multi-source analysis and reasoning

Agent control

Pre-processed by Perplexity's AI before reaching your agent

Extras

Deep research mode, step by step reasoning mode

03Setup

# Add to ~/.claude.json under mcpServers
"brave-search": {
  "type": "stdio",
  "command": "npx",
  "args": ["-y", "@anthropic/brave-search-mcp"],
  "env": { "BRAVE_API_KEY": "your-key" }
}

Free tier: 2,000 queries per month, no credit card required

Local search is underrated. For anything location based, it returns structured business data that is hard to get elsewhere.

Combine with Firecrawl. Search with Brave to find URLs, then scrape with Firecrawl for full page content.