What Is Brave Search MCP Server?

Brave Search MCP Server connects Claude to the Brave Search API, enabling real-time web search queries from within Claude Code and Claude Desktop. It is maintained by the Model Context Protocol team under the official modelcontextprotocol/servers repository.

Quick Facts

FieldValue
Package@modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search
Installnpx @modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search
Compatible withClaude Code, Claude Desktop
Statusactive
GitHubhttps://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers/tree/main/src/brave-search

What You Can Do With It

  • Web search: Issue live search queries and retrieve current results from the open web without leaving your Claude session.
  • Current events: Ask Claude about recent news or time-sensitive topics that fall outside its training data cutoff.
  • Research: Pull together multiple search results to support longer-form investigation or summarization tasks.
  • Fact-checking: Verify claims or statistics by querying live sources rather than relying solely on Claude’s parametric knowledge.

How to Set It Up

Prerequisites: You need a Brave Search API key. Sign up at brave.com/search/api — a free tier is available with rate limits.

Step 1 — Test the server locally:

BRAVE_API_KEY=your_api_key_here npx @modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search
**Step 2 — Add to Claude Desktop** by editing `claude_desktop_config.json` (located at `~/Library/Application Support/Claude/` on macOS or `%APPDATA%\Claude\` on Windows):

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

Step 3 — Add to Claude Code by editing .claude/mcp.json in your project root, or via the global config:

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

Restart the client after saving the config. Claude should then have access to search tools in the session.

Works Best With

This server is confirmed compatible with Claude Code and Claude Desktop. Both clients support the MCP stdio transport that this server uses. Claude Desktop is the more common starting point for interactive research and fact-checking workflows; Claude Code is a natural fit when you need to ground coding or technical research tasks in live documentation or current package versions.

Known Limitations

  • API key required: The server does not work without a valid BRAVE_API_KEY. There is no anonymous fallback.
  • Rate limits on free tier: Brave’s free API plan caps requests per month. High-volume sessions will exhaust quota quickly — check your Brave Search API dashboard for current limits.
  • Search results only: This server returns web search results; it does not provide access to Brave’s local search, image search, or news-specific endpoints beyond what the standard API exposes.
  • No caching: Each query hits the Brave API directly, so repeated identical queries count against your quota.
  • npx latency: Using npx pulls the package on first run if not cached locally. Consider installing the package globally (npm install -g @modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search) in latency-sensitive setups.

Community Resources

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