Brave Search MCP Server

An MCP server implementation that integrates the Brave Search API, providing both web and local search capabilities.

Features

Web Search: General queries, news, articles, with pagination and freshness controls
Local Search: Find businesses, restaurants, and services with detailed information
Flexible Filtering: Control result types, safety levels, and content freshness
Smart Fallbacks: Local search automatically falls back to web when no results are found

Tools

brave_web_search
- Execute web searches with pagination and filtering
- Inputs:
  - query (string): Search terms
  - count (number, optional): Results per page (max 20)
  - offset (number, optional): Pagination offset (max 9)
brave_local_search
- Search for local businesses and services
- Inputs:
  - query (string): Local search terms
  - count (number, optional): Number of results (max 20)
- Automatically falls back to web search if no local results found

Configuration

Getting an API Key

Sign up for a Brave Search API account
Choose a plan (Free tier available with 2,000 queries/month)
Generate your API key from the developer dashboard

Usage with Claude Desktop

Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:

Docker

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brave-search": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "-e",
        "BRAVE_API_KEY",
        "mcp/brave-search"
      ],
      "env": {
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

NPX

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brave-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search"
      ],
      "env": {
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

Usage with VS Code

For quick installation, use the one-click installation buttons below…