brave_place_search
brave_place_searchSearch for nearby places, businesses, cities, addresses, and streets by coordinates or location, and return structured POI details for local queries.
Instructions
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.
When to use:
- POIs near coordinates or a named area (e.g. "coffee shops in Paris") -> 'results', each with structured business data (postal address, hours, contact, ratings, photos, categories, timezone).
- Browsing general POIs (omit 'query'; supply 'latitude'+'longitude' or 'location').
- Disambiguating a bare city name (e.g. "springfield") -> 'cities'.
- Resolving a specific address (e.g. "350 5th avenue" with NYC coords) -> 'addresses' (often plus 'streets').
- Looking up a street by name (e.g. "michigan avenue" with Chicago coords) -> 'streets'.
Inputs:
- Anchor the search via 'latitude'+'longitude' or 'location' (or both). With neither, 'query' is required.
- 'addresses' / 'streets' only surface when the query is address-/street-shaped AND geographically anchored.
- 'location' format: US -- '<city> <state> <country>' (e.g. 'san francisco ca united states'); non-US -- '<city> <country>' (e.g. 'tokyo japan'). Capitalization and commas don't matter.
- 'count' caps results (max 50, default 20). 'radius' (meters) biases toward closer results; it does NOT hard-limit the search area.Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| count | No | Number of results to return. Maximum is 50. Default is 20. | |
| query | No | Query string. Shape influences the response: POI-like queries -> `results`; bare/ambiguous city names -> `cities`; address- or street-shaped queries with a geographic anchor -> `addresses` and/or `streets`. If omitted, returns general POIs in the supplied area. | |
| units | No | Units of measurement for distance values. Defaults to 'metric'. | |
| accept | No | The default supported media type is application/json. | |
| geoloc | No | Optional geolocation token used to refine results. | |
| radius | No | Bias toward results closer to the supplied coordinates, in meters. NOT a hard cutoff -- the API may still return more distant results. If omitted, the search is performed globally. | |
| country | No | Two-letter country code (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2) used to scope the search. Defaults to 'US'. | |
| ui_lang | No | User interface language for the response, usually of the form '<language>-<region>'. Defaults to 'en-US'. | |
| latitude | No | Latitude of the geographical coordinates around which to search, in degrees (-90 to 90). Typically paired with `longitude`. | |
| location | No | Location string to search around, used as an alternative to `latitude` and `longitude`. For US locations prefer the form '<city> <state> <country name>' (e.g. 'san francisco ca united states'); for non-US locations use '<city> <country name>' (e.g. 'tokyo japan'). No commas or special characters needed; capitalization does not matter. | |
| longitude | No | Longitude of the geographical coordinates around which to search, in degrees (-180 to 180). Typically paired with `latitude`. | |
| safesearch | No | Safe search level for the query results. 'off' - No filtering. 'moderate' - Filter out explicit content. 'strict' - Filter out explicit and suggestive content. Defaults to 'strict'. | |
| spellcheck | No | Whether to apply spellcheck before executing the search. Defaults to true. | |
| user-agent | No | The user agent originating the request. Brave Search can utilize the user agent to provide a different experience depending on the device as described by the string. The user agent should follow the commonly used browser agent strings on each platform. For more information on curating user agents, see RFC 9110. | |
| api-version | No | The API version to use. This is denoted by the format YYYY-MM-DD. Default is the latest that is available. Read more about API versioning at https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/documentation/guides/versioning. | |
| search_lang | No | Language for the search results. Defaults to 'en'. | |
| cache-control | No | Brave Search will return cached content by default. To prevent caching set the Cache-Control header to no-cache. This is currently done as best effort. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| type | Yes | Top-level response discriminator. Always "locations" for Place Search. | |
| query | No | ||
| cities | No | City matches for the query. Typically populated when the query is a bare or ambiguous city name (e.g. "springfield", "san francisco"). | |
| results | No | Points of interest matching the search. Populated for POI-shaped queries. | |
| streets | No | Street matches. Typically populated when the query is a street name AND is geographically anchored via `latitude`+`longitude` or a specific `location`. | |
| location | No | The search area as resolved by the API (e.g. coordinates + city name). Useful for confirming the API interpreted the input as expected and for grounding follow-up queries. | |
| addresses | No | Address matches. Typically populated when the query is a street + number AND is geographically anchored via `latitude`+`longitude` or a specific `location`. |