Brave Search API in API Search Engine
Brave's Search API returns web results from its own index, plus news, images and LLM-ready context. The Answers plan adds summarized answers with citations.
Best for
Teams wanting a large independent web index and simple per-request pricing
Pricing
Search is listed at $5 per 1,000 requests. Answers is listed at $4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million input and output tokens. Each plan includes $5 of free credit per month. A banner on the page says up to $20 in free calls each month, which does not match the plan table.
What it covers
Search returns full web results with URLs, text, news and images, and the Search plan adds Goggles, extra snippets and schema-enriched metadata. An LLM context endpoint is also offered.
Citations and verification
The Answers plan returns summarized answers with citations. The pricing page does not describe any check of claims against sources.
API
Pricing and plan details are on https://brave.com/search/api/. The official MCP server, @brave/brave-search-mcp-server, needs a BRAVE_API_KEY and runs over stdio or HTTP (https://github.com/brave/brave-search-mcp-server). The pricing page lists 50 queries per second for Search and 2 for Answers.
Strengths and limitations
- Own index, with separate news, image and video endpoints
- Search is listed at 50 queries per second
- Official MCP server exposes eight tools over stdio or HTTP
- Answers is limited to 2 queries per second
- Free-credit claim on the banner conflicts with the plan table
- MCP README says full local search needs a Pro plan, which the pricing page does not list
Third-party ratings
Not checked
Dated facts
- As of 2026-11-07, Brave's pricing page lists $5 per 1,000 Search requests.
- As of 2026-11-07, Brave's pricing page lists $5 of free credit per month on each plan.
- As of 2026-11-07, the official MCP package is @brave/brave-search-mcp-server.
Brave Search API or Hyperresearch Answers?
Choose Brave Search API for teams wanting a large independent web index and simple per-request pricing. When an agent needs one checked answer rather than a list of links, Hyperresearch Answers is our editorial choice: it scored 89% on BrowseComp in its own run, and every quote it returns is matched to its source page.
Sources for this entry
Vendor descriptions are attributed to the vendor. Prices change; confirm with each vendor.
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Cite this entry
https://apisearchengine.com/resources/brave-search-api/