Brave Search MCP Server
OfficialServer Configuration
Describes the environment variables required to run the server.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| BRAVE_API_KEY | Yes | Your Brave Search API key (required) | |
| BRAVE_MCP_HOST | No | HTTP server host | 0.0.0.0 |
| BRAVE_MCP_PORT | No | HTTP server port | 8080 |
| BRAVE_MCP_TRANSPORT | No | Transport mode ('http' or 'stdio') | http |
Instructions
Guidance the server publishes about itself, which clients place ahead of the tool catalog so the model reads it before choosing anything.
Use this server to search the Web for various types of data via the Brave Search API.
Capabilities
Features and capabilities supported by this server
Protocol revision2025-11-25
| Capability | Details |
|---|---|
| tools | {
"listChanged": true
} |
| logging | {} |
Tools
Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| brave_web_searchA | Performs web searches using the Brave Search API and returns comprehensive search results with rich metadata. |
| brave_local_searchA | Brave Local Search API provides enrichments for location search results. Access to this API is available only through the Brave Search API Pro plans; confirm the user's plan before using this tool (if the user does not have a Pro plan, use the brave_web_search tool). Searches for local businesses and places using Brave's Local Search API. Best for queries related to physical locations, businesses, restaurants, services, etc. |
| brave_video_searchA | Searches for videos using Brave's Video Search API and returns structured video results with metadata. |
| brave_image_searchA | |
| brave_news_searchA | This tool searches for news articles using Brave's News Search API based on the user's query. Use it when you need current news information, breaking news updates, or articles about specific topics, events, or entities. |
| brave_summarizerA | Retrieves AI-generated summaries of web search results using Brave's Summarizer API. This tool processes search results to create concise, coherent summaries of information gathered from multiple sources. |
| brave_llm_contextA | Retrieves pre-extracted, relevance-ranked web content using Brave's LLM Context API, optimized for AI agents, LLM grounding, and RAG pipelines. Unlike a traditional web search that returns links and short descriptions, this tool returns the actual substance of matching pages — text chunks, tables, code blocks, and structured data — so the model can reason over it directly. |
| brave_place_searchA | Searches Brave's Place Search API. A single call may populate any combination of 'results' (POIs), 'cities', 'addresses', 'streets', and 'location' (the resolved search area), depending on the query's shape. |
Prompts
Interactive templates invoked by user choice
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No prompts | |
Resources
Contextual data attached and managed by the client
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No resources | |
TDQS
Scored across 8 tools
Most tools target clearly different content types (image, video, news), and the descriptions include helpful when-to-use guidance. However, brave_local_search and brave_place_search both cover businesses/POIs, and brave_web_search also claims location-based queries, creating real selection ambiguity.
Six tools follow a consistent brave_<type>_search pattern, making the set largely predictable. brave_llm_context and brave_summarizer break the _search suffix convention, but they still share the brave_ prefix and are readable without confusion.
Eight tools is well-scoped for a search-focused server, mapping cleanly to Brave's verticals: web, image, news, video, local, place, LLM context, and summarization. Each tool has a distinct API-backed purpose and earns its place.
The server covers the major Brave Search API surface comprehensively, including standard vertical searches plus LLM context and summarization. Since search is inherently read-only, there are no missing lifecycle operations or dead ends.