🔍 web-search-plus-mcp

Multi-provider web search and extraction MCP server with intelligent auto-routing.

web-search-plus-mcp is the standalone MCP packaging of Web Search Plus. It gives Claude Desktop, NanoBot, Cursor, and other MCP-compatible hosts access to the same Python routing engine family used by the Hermes/OpenClaw Web Search Plus tools.

✨ Features

• 10 search providers — Serper, Brave, Tavily, Exa, Querit, Linkup, Firecrawl, Perplexity, You.com, SearXNG

• 5 extract providers — Firecrawl, Linkup, Tavily, Exa, You.com

• Intelligent auto-routing — scores query intent and picks a provider automatically

• Quality reports — optional routing/result diagnostics

• Research mode — opt-in multi-provider search + top-source extraction with a time budget

• Zero-install run — uvx web-search-plus-mcp

• MCP-native — stdio server exposing web_search and web_extract

🚀 Quick Start

# Run instantly with uvx
uvx web-search-plus-mcp

# Or install globally
pip install web-search-plus-mcp
web-search-plus-mcp

At least one provider credential is required for search. Extraction needs at least one extraction-capable provider key.

⚙️ Claude Desktop Config

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS or %APPDATA%\\Claude\\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-search-plus": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["web-search-plus-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "LINKUP_API_KEY": "your_linkup_key",
        "TAVILY_API_KEY": "your_tavily_key",
        "EXA_API_KEY": "your_exa_key",
        "FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "your_firecrawl_key",
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "your_brave_key",
        "SERPER_API_KEY": "your_serper_key",
        "QUERIT_API_KEY": "your_querit_key",
        "PERPLEXITY_API_KEY": "your_perplexity_key",
        "YOU_API_KEY": "your_you_key",
        "SEARXNG_INSTANCE_URL": "https://your-searxng-instance.example.com"
      }
    }
  }
}

You can also place a .env file next to the package/project with the same variables.

🔎 Search Providers

• Serper — Google-style facts, news, shopping, local queries

• Brave — general-purpose independent web index

• Tavily — research and analysis

• Exa — semantic discovery, similarity, deep/deep-reasoning synthesis

• Querit — multilingual, real-time AI search

• Linkup — source-backed grounding/citations

• Firecrawl — web search plus scrape-ready content

• Perplexity — direct synthesized answers

• You.com — LLM-ready real-time snippets

• SearXNG — privacy-first self-hosted meta-search

📄 Extract Providers

• Linkup — recommended first choice for clean markdown and low cost

• Firecrawl — robust scrape fallback, useful for JS-heavy/blocked pages

• Tavily — extraction/content API

• Exa — contents API

• You.com — LLM-ready snippets/content where available

🛠 MCP Tool Reference

web_search

Parameters:

• query — required search query

• provider — auto, serper, brave, tavily, exa, querit, linkup, firecrawl, perplexity, you, searxng

• count — results to return, default 5, max 20

• depth — Exa depth: normal, deep, deep-reasoning

• time_range — hour, day, week, month, year

• include_domains / exclude_domains — domain allow/deny lists

• mode — normal or research

• quality_report — include routing/result diagnostics

• research_time_budget — best-effort wall-clock budget for research mode

Example MCP arguments:

{
  "query": "latest Hermes Agent release",
  "provider": "linkup",
  "count": 5,
  "quality_report": true
}

web_extract

Parameters:

• urls — required list of URLs

• provider — auto, firecrawl, linkup, tavily, exa, you

• format — markdown or html

• include_images — include image metadata when supported

• include_raw_html — include raw HTML when supported

• render_js — render JavaScript before extraction when supported

Example MCP arguments:

{
  "urls": ["https://example.com"],
  "provider": "linkup",
  "format": "markdown"
}

🧠 Auto-Routing Examples

• iPhone 16 Pro price → Serper/Brave shopping-style search

• how does TCP/IP work → Tavily research-style search

• latest multilingual EV market updates → Querit/Linkup real-time/source-backed search

• companies like Stripe → Exa discovery search

• what is quantum computing → Perplexity/You.com direct-answer style search

• privacy focused search results → SearXNG when configured

Credits

Built on the Web Search Plus routing logic originally developed for OpenClaw/Clawhub and later ported to Hermes as hermes-web-search-plus.

License

MIT © 2026 robbyczgw-cla