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@brave/brave-search-mcp-server

Brave Search MCP Server: web results, images, videos, rich results, AI summaries, and more.

★ 1k stars↓ 15k/wkupdated 0d agogithub ↗
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90excellent
▣ Overview

What it does

This MCP server integrates the Brave Search API, exposing web search, image search, video search, news search, local business search, and place-of-interest search. It also provides AI-powered summarization of search results. The server supports both STDIO (default in v2.x) and HTTP transports. Search results can include rich metadata—ratings, hours of operation, direct links to sources—and parameters support content filtering, localization, freshness controls, and custom result ranking via Goggles.

Who it's for

Developers building AI agents that need grounded, current information for reasoning. This includes LLM applications that analyze news, research topics, or help users find local services or products.

Common use cases

  • Ground Claude's responses in live web search results before generating advice
  • Search for recent news articles and automatically summarize findings for AI analysis
  • Retrieve images or videos matching a query for multimodal AI workflows
  • Find local businesses, restaurants, or services filtered by location, rating, and hours
  • Chain web search results through Brave's AI summarizer to extract key insights

Setup pitfalls

  • Requires a valid Brave Search API key; some features (local business search, extra snippets) require a Pro plan
  • Default transport changed to STDIO in v2.x; set BRAVE_MCP_TRANSPORT=http if you need HTTP instead
  • CI is currently failing, indicating potential build instability—test before deploying to production
  • Image search response structure changed in v2.x and no longer includes base64 data; older code expecting embedded images will break
▣ Score BreakdownMCPScore = Σ(raw × weight)
DimensionRawWeighted
Security
35%
100
35.0
Freshness
25%
100
25.0
Adoption
20%
81
16.2
Quality
10%
90
9.0
Trust
10%
50
5.0
Total
90.2
⚿ Capabilities & Risk Explainer
networksecrets
◆ Risk level: medium
network + secrets — requires access to credentials or environment secrets.
⚙ Install config
Claude Desktop · Cursor · Windsurf · VS Code (Copilot) · Claude Code
add to your MCP client config:
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bravebrave-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@brave/brave-search-mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }
}
📈 Score historylast 33 snapshots
4/30/20266/11/2026 · 33 snapshots
⚙ Maintenance health
71/ 100 · is this project alive?
contributors (1y)17
top contributor share31%
releases (1y)95
last release9d ago
ci⚠ failing
⛁ Raw data
weekly downloads15k
github stars1k
forks173
open issues31
license✓ present
readme length18226 chars
last publish0d ago
last commit0d ago
last updated1d ago
install verified✓ pass · 24d ago
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