Brave Search MCP Server

The Brave Search MCP Server bridges Claude and other AI assistants to the robust search capabilities of Brave’s public API. It eliminates the need for developers to build custom web‑scraping or third‑party search integrations, providing a single, well‑defined interface that supports multiple modalities—text, images, news, videos, and even local points of interest. By leveraging Brave’s privacy‑focused search engine, the server delivers up-to-date results while respecting user anonymity and data protection best practices.

At its core, the server exposes a suite of search tools that mirror Brave’s own endpoints. Each tool accepts straightforward parameters such as , , and optional freshness filters (e.g., “last 24 hours” or a custom date range). The tools are:

• brave_web_search – standard web search with pagination support.
• brave_image_search – retrieves up to three relevant images, returned as a resource that can be embedded directly in an assistant’s response.
• brave_news_search – fetches recent news articles, useful for fact‑checking or trend analysis.
• brave_video_search – pulls video results with optional freshness controls.
• brave_local_search – queries local businesses or points of interest; it falls back to a web search when location data is unavailable, but requires a Pro plan for full functionality.

These tools are designed to be invoked via MCP’s “tool call” mechanism, allowing an AI assistant to decide when and how to perform a search. The server’s responses are structured, making it trivial for downstream processing or integration into multi‑step reasoning pipelines. For example, a conversation about the latest tech releases could trigger , while a recipe request might call to surface dish photos.

Developers can incorporate the server into a wide range of workflows. In customer‑support bots, it enables real‑time lookup of product documentation or troubleshooting guides. Content creators can quickly gather reference material or visual assets during ideation. In data‑driven applications, the search tools provide a lightweight alternative to building proprietary crawlers or purchasing expensive enterprise APIs. Because the server is MCP‑compatible, it plugs into any assistant that understands tool calls—Claude, GPT‑4o, or custom agents built on top of the MCP ecosystem.

What sets this server apart is its privacy‑centric design and modular feature set. Brave’s search engine prioritizes user privacy, so no personal data is logged or reused beyond the immediate query. Additionally, the ability to fetch images and local results directly from a single API endpoint saves developers from juggling multiple services. The server’s simple, declarative configuration (just an API key) lowers the barrier to entry, while its rich set of search modalities keeps it useful across domains.