@brave/brave-search-mcp-server

What it does

The server wraps the Brave Search API, exposing tools for web search, local business and place lookup, image and video search, news search, and AI-powered summarization. Requests flow through Brave's servers to retrieve current results, rich metadata, and optional AI summaries. Supports both STDIO (default) and HTTP transports. Version 2.x simplified image responses by removing base64 encoding to reduce context overhead.

Who it's for

Backend engineers and Claude application developers who need live search results, news, local business data, or media assets to augment Claude's knowledge. Useful when static training data is insufficient or freshness is critical.

Common use cases

• Fetch current news or web context to supplement Claude's knowledge cutoff in real-time conversations.
• Search for local businesses, hours, ratings, and AI-generated descriptions within an AI workflow.
• Retrieve images or videos for analysis, classification, or enrichment tasks.
• Generate AI summaries from web search results for rapid context synthesis.
• Filter web or news results by freshness, language, country, or content safety level.

Setup pitfalls

• Requires a Brave Search API key; set it as the BRAVE_API_KEY environment variable.
• Version 2.x defaults to STDIO transport (not HTTP); if you need HTTP, set BRAVE_MCP_TRANSPORT=http or use the --transport http runtime argument.
• Image response format changed in v2.x (base64 encoding removed); clients expecting embedded image data will need updating.
• Pro plan features like detailed local search and extra snippets gracefully fall back on free tiers, but functionality varies by plan level.